Thread Subject: force swap to overcome out of memory error?

Hi,
I am using the spectogram function, which in combination with the images it produces requires a fair amount of RAM. Theoretically, I have enough virtual memory, but not enough RAM. Is there any way to force Matlab to use swap space? Having it run slowly would be better than not at all!

My system is Ubuntu 9.04 with Matlab 7.3.0.298 (R2006b). I've added vm.swappiness=80 to /etc/sysctl.conf, but haven't noticed any difference yet.

a@b:/$ free
                            total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2043800 1833080 210720 0 4596 334152
-/+ buffers/cache: 1494332 549468
Swap: 5855684 315780 5539904