this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2026
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What is the proper way, if there is one, to remove files and applications added to ram with preload? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 12 hours ago by vortexal@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml
6 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

If you're not aware of what preload is, it's a command line application that allows you to add files to ram, so they can be accessed faster by the applications that need them.

It seems to work well for what I'm using it for, which is to run games from slower storage devices, but there doesn't seem to be any documentation for a proper way to remove the files once they've been added to ram. What I've been doing is to just use htop to terminate the preload command, but I feel like this is not intended at all. Is there a better way to remove these files?

I should mention that while trying to search for a solution myself, I did see gopreload mentioned a few times. I would try this out myself, but there's no proper installation instructions, at least not any I could find that work in Linux Mint.

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[–] HelloRoot@lemy.lol 9 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Are we talking about this preload?

https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/jammy/man8/preload.8.html

Cause if so, it doesn't actually let you manually add specific files to RAM. It's an adaptive daemon that automatically learns which files your applications use frequently over time and prefetches them. So when you launch it and then play games, it's observing patterns and making predictions.

This also explains why there's no "remove files" command. The files preload loads into RAM aren't locked there; they're in the page cache, which the kernel manages freely. If something else needs that memory, the kernel will evict those cached files automatically. Killing preload via htop should not really do anything, except it not doing it's thing anymore.

[–] vortexal@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

When I used preload, it let me manually add files to ram. I used sudo preload filename for each file (the game I tried it with only had two) and it seemed to add them to ram. I know this because the game had hitching issues even after just adding the main executable but the hitching went away when I added the second file.

[–] HelloRoot@lemy.lol 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

This doesn't really prove it.

Running ths game multiple times will do the same, because the pages will stay cached. Operating systems are smart with RAM. Things that were recently used stay in RAM, even though the OS reports it being "free". Read this for some more info: https://www.linuxatemyram.com/

And preload might swallow the filepath arg without doing anything with it.

Instead you could share the output of

preload --help
preload --version
sudo preload --verbose
# followed by running a game

What you describe can be done with another tool https://hoytech.com/vmtouch but not with preload.

[–] RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world 13 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

My understanding is the kernel will remove them if it needs the ram, so there is no need unless it's for security reasons.

[–] vortexal@lemmy.ml 3 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

When you say "remove", do you mean completely remove or move them to swap/zswap/zram, depending on what the system has enabled?

[–] RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world 13 points 11 hours ago

Cached files are freeable so the kernel will drop them instead of sending them to swap.

And I'm pretty sure zram is just a swap device in RAM so should follow the same rules.