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Duncan wrote: |
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> Now, if you /really/ want to make a difference in portage's speed, |
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> consider pointing PORTAGE_TMPDIR at a tmpfs. If you've a decent amount |
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> of memory, it'll make a HUGE difference, since all the files it normally |
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> creates only temporarily in by default, /var/tmp/portage/* will be |
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> created in memory (tmpfs) only. Even with a relatively low amount of |
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> memory, say a gig (we're talking amd64 system context here, after all, |
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> and a gig has been relatively common since its introduction, not some old |
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> 1990s 32-bit x86), where tmpfs may be swapped out in some cases, the |
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> shortest lived files should never hit disk (swap in the case of tmpfs) at |
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> all. That's a LOT of extreme-latency hard-disk I/O avoided!! If you |
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> have some serious memory, 2 gig, 4 gig, higher (I have 8 gig), it's even |
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> MORE effective, as only the biggest merges will ever hit disk at all, |
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> except of course for the initial PORTDIR/DISTDIR operations and the final |
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> qmerge to the live filesystem. |
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|
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This advice caught my attention since I moved my tmp space to Reiserfs |
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for performance reasons. My knowledge of tmpfs is limited but I think it |
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is a filesystem that uses RAM and can grow and shrink dynamically, |
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right? If I follow this advice, what happens when I compile something |
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like Open Office which allocates 3-4GB in /var/tmp during compilation |
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and I only have 2GB physical RAM in the computer? |
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Regards |
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Morgan |