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On 2013-10-13 5:49 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@×××××.com> wrote: |
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> Talk about putting some stuff on tmpfs. O_O I have always wanted to |
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> copy the tree to tmpfs and run "time emerge -uvaDN world". Just to see |
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> how fast it will go. lol |
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I remember once I worked for an Apple reseller that had this accounting |
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program that required them to do some kind of 'reconciliation' every |
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month that required a massive amount of processing - it took like 36 |
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hours or something ridiculous (literally almost took all weekend), and |
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he had implemented a rule that someone had to be there the entire time |
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to baby sit the process - apparently it wasn't uncommon for there to be |
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an error that would require them to restart it - and this was on a |
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pretty powerful system at the time. |
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|
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Well, one weekend, when we were building a system for a customer with |
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tons of RAM (for the time) I talked them into a little experiment. The |
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boss didn't believe me when I told him I could get the reconciliation |
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processing time down to less than a day (I told him probably just a few |
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hours, but wasn't sure)... so we made a bet. |
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|
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I took a Quadra 900 (or maybe it was a 950), and added a bunch of RAM - |
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I think we got it up to 128MB or something ridiculous (this was in about |
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1992). The accounting DB was about 40MB at the time, but hey, we had the |
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RAM, so I just loaded it up. |
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|
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I created a RAM disk, copied the entire Accounting DB into it, and |
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started running the reconciliation. The process finished after about 45 |
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minutes (I was even surprised at that), and while there were no errors |
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and it said it had completed successfully, the boss was sure that |
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something had gone wrong. So, he re-ran it the old way on the old |
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server, and almost 2 days later, when the numbers matched, he just shook |
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his head and paid me off, muttering about the lost weekends over the |
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last 5 years he'd been there. He kept that machine around for running |
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the reconciliation for at least a few months, but then I left, so no |
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idea how long he kept it for... |
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