Any Linux gurus that know how to manually set the Linux buffer cache size?

[Dusk]

The topic pretty much says it all .
Anyone that can help or point me in the right direction ?

 

[koffiejunkie]

Which buffer/cache? There are many?

What are you trying to do?

 

[Nod]

If your referring to filesystem caches: http://www.linux-tutorial.info/modules.php?name=MContent&pageid=286

 

[SilverNodashi]

it would help if you tell us which buffer, exactly. Or what problems you're running into.

 

[koffiejunkie]

The kernel maintains the filesystem buffers/cache. It uses unused memory only, and will make it available immediately if a process tries to allocate it. If you restrict the size of the filesystem buffers/cache (I'm not sure you can set it, but let's suppose), you'll only limit performance. If you set it at a fixed size (again, suppose), you might run into a situation where processes get swapped to disk while you have unused buffer/cache space.

So my advice is, assuming you're talking about filesystem buffers/cache, i.e. the second line of numbers in the output of free -m, don't fiddle with it. The more memory the kernel can assign to it, the better.