what you need is http://code.google.com/p/pagecache-mangagement/ This tool allows the user to limit the amount of pagecache used by applications under Linux. This is similar to nice, ionice etc. in that it usually doesn't make an application go faster, but does reduce the impact of the application on other applications performance. This is especially useful for applications that walk sequentially through data sets larger than memory, as discarding their pagecache does not reduce their performance (although this tool does add overhead of about 2%). See http://lwn.net/Articles/224653/ Although it is little more than a proof-of-concept it seems to be fairly useful. When running pagecache-management.sh dd if=100-mb-file of=foo or pagecache-management.sh cp -a /usr/src/linux-2.6.20 /usr/src/foo

And what about hurricanes? Who will airlift these guys without visa?