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On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 4:44 PM, Stefan G. Weichinger <lists@×××××.at> wrote: |
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> |
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> Greets, gentoo-users, |
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> |
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> as I ordered myself an upgrade from 4 to 8 gigs of RAM for my main |
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> workstation, just because it's rather cheap now and I have good use for |
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> the "old" 4 gigs I wonder what to do with those shiny new additional 4 gigs. |
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> |
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> OK, linux uses it for IO-caching, yep ... |
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> |
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> I have some ram-disk already for compiling stuff (portage-stuff) and I |
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> can think of increasing app-caches like operas own ram-cache to make use |
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> of the memory. |
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> |
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> I will give my virtual machines more RAM to improve their performance, |
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> yes, this is maybe the main reason for me to upgrade RAM. |
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> |
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> But are there any other things I might forget? |
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> |
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> Are there any creative non-ricer ways to really make use of it? |
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> |
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> I would like to hear your opinion on this, I am quite sure the |
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> gentoo-community knows one trick or the other ;-) |
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> |
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> Thanks a lot, Stefan |
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> |
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> |
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Non-ricer? Well... this sorta breaks that category. |
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There's a rather handy tool[1] already in the stage3, I've used it |
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alongside bootchart to force-load everything needed into ram during |
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boot, before it's needed, so execution gets held up by i/o just a |
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little less. Actually shaved a few seconds off of my desktop's bootup |
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once upon a time (3.0 GHz core 2 duo on 4GB of ram, which had |
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excessive eyecandy while remaining fairly lightweight). The second use |
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I put it through, and this one just a little more long-term useful, |
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was preloading my wm, most of my home directory (primarily all the |
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config files), aterm, firefox, a few other common tools I use, and the |
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libraries they were using on my system while logging in. All of my |
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applications were starting in no time at all. The catch... I took the |
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brute force approach, rather than using an add-on tool to |
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automagically choose what to prefetch for me. There are also setting |
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in the bootscripts that, if you're not already using them, will make |
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use of at least a little, using tmpfs here and there, and also just |
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putting /tmp and /var/tmp onto tmpfs (outside of building things like |
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open office, this tends to work well). Oh, and if you really do want |
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to use up all that ram.... build openoffice in tmpfs... if it could |
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use all 8GB for files only, it might actually work out, I know it |
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kills off when you only have part of 4GB to feed it. |
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|
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[1] artifice ~ # busybox readahead |
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BusyBox v1.14.2 (2009-10-13 06:37:22) multi-call binary |
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|
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Usage: readahead [FILE]... |
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|
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Preload FILE(s) in RAM cache so that subsequent reads for thosefiles |
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do not block on disk I/O |
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|
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-- |
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Poison [BLX] |
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Joshua M. Murphy |
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