Gentoo Archives: gentoo-performance

From: Bart <scarfboy@×××××.com>
To: gentoo-performance@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-performance] ramdisk
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 00:15:13
Message-Id: b71082d804102117153c8d9cd9@mail.gmail.com
In Reply to: [gentoo-performance] ramdisk by omghaai
1 Well, when linux is running, you can of course use shm.
2 But when linux is running the point is moot, the kernel's
3 in memory. I don't really see your point there, it's sort of
4 a prerequisite for booting:)
5
6
7 Putting filesystem stuff in there is probably not too rewarding.
8 I'm guessing the most consistently accessed directories
9 are /etc and the bins. Etc you want on your hard drive, and
10 the bins are way too large. Some smart pathing priotities or a
11 mounting-over-an-existing-directory trick would enable you to
12 do so fairly safely, except updating executables wouldn't
13 update the ram copy, or only do so. But for executables I
14 doubt there's much use; the common stuff probably gets
15 cached anyhow, though I don't know about that.
16
17
18
19 Hrm... I've been wondering how much of a hard drive relief
20 it would be to put the metadata of the top x most accessed
21 files or just up to y MB in of it ramdisk. Considering hard
22 drive flutter is a major bummer to performance these days,
23 doing a flutter for common filesystem *meta*data seems
24 rather silly - and a /lot/ of programs stat() way like crazy.
25
26 Or maybe that's just my find-abusing self.
27 On not enough coffee, probably.
28
29 It seems a memory-cheap way to avoid unnecessary
30 accesses - although it would probably have to hook into
31 general FS code, so not be practical. I mean, if you're
32 going to touch that, you may as well make a decent
33 scheduler:P
34
35
36 --Bart
37
38
39 On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 21:34:04 +0200, omghaai <omghaai@×××××××××.za> wrote:
40 > Hi.
41 >
42 > I've been looking into ramdisks lately and was wondering what the
43 > maximum size of a ramdisk can be, the most I've seen so far is 10Mb.
44 >
45 > If limited to 10Mb, what would benifit the system the most, by putting
46 > it in the ramdisk (for an average workstation)?
47 >
48 > If not limited to 10Mb, is it possible to put the whole kernel in a
49 > ramdisk and would it be worth it?
50
51 --
52 gentoo-performance@g.o mailing list

Replies

Subject Author
RE: [gentoo-performance] ramdisk Tad Glines <tad@××××××.com>
Re: [gentoo-performance] ramdisk "Ervin Németh" <ervin.nemeth@××××.hu>