Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: upgrade an old system

[Mark Haney]

Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> On Mittwoch 06 Mai 2009, Mark Haney wrote:
>> Duncan wrote:
>>> Consider pointing PORTAGE_TMPDIR at a tmpfs.
>>>
>>> The idea is based on the fact that everything portage does in its tmpdir
>>> (/var/tmp by default) is temporary, erased as soon as it's done emerging
>>> that package.  Since tmpfs uses swap backed memory, worst-case, it has to
>>> write to swap -- that is, to disk, which is where it would otherwise be
>>> writing ALL the temporary files.  With memory access so much faster than
>>> disk access, every file that's erased before it hits disk saves time, and
>>> it can make a BIG difference in emerge times.
>> Duncan, you talk about tmpfs and I'm suddenly interested in trying this
>> out.  My question is, how much space do you allocate for the tmpfs?  I
>> know it'll fall back to swap if I'm out of space there, but what works
>> well for you?  I have (currently) 1GB RAM on this system, but I'm
>> getting ready to order more to get me to 4GB.
>
>
> 2gb. That is enough for almost everything. Not enough for openoffice.
> tmpfs                 2,0G  3,2M  2,0G   1% /var/tmp/portage
> tmpfs                 1,0G  116K  1,0G   1% /tmp
>
>

Now how is that going to play out when I only have 1GB of RAM?


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Mark Haney
Sr. Systems Administrator
ERC Broadband
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