Re: Solaris tmpfs vs. Linux RAMdisk

Jim Nance (jlnance@avanticorp.com)
Wed, 14 Apr 1999 09:30:21 -0400

On Tue, Apr 13, 1999 at 04:35:47PM -0700, Charu Chaubal wrote:
> How comparable are tmpfs on Solaris and /dev/ram on Linux?
>
> do they essentially provide the same thing? are there any
> particular ways in which they should be set up (flags, parameters, etc)?
>
> if all I am looking for is a really really fast filesystem on each (for files
> that aren't huge), will each behave more or less like that?
>
> or is there a better equivalent on Linux?

Hi Charu,
The ram disks under Linux have several limitations that probably make
them unsuitable for what you are trying to do. I believe that they were
designed primarily for OS installs from floppy disk. The Linux filesystems
do not do synchronous metadata writes and are therefor very fast. I do not
think you need to do anything special to get tmpfs like performance from ext2.
If you are going to put a large number of files into a directory, then there
is an experimental filesystem called reiserfs you might want to try. You can
get more information from:

http://devlinux.org/namesys/

I hope this helps,

Jim

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Nance                                                 Avant! Corporation
(919) 941-6655    Do you have sweet iced tea?       jim_nance@avanticorp.com
                  No, but there's sugar on the table.


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