At 03:05 PM 11/9/2002 -0600, you wrote: >Anybody know of a *NIX distro that runs from a RAM drive? What would the >performance gain be? > >I just read about a RAM drive card on /. that can do 2GB, but the cost is >nutz. So I was thinking that since RAM is fairly cheap now and mobos are >supporting >larger amounts of RAM it would be cool to have a distro where the entire >filesystem in a big RAM drive. Permanent storage could be achieved by >writing the >contents of the RAM drive to the hard drive. It seems that something like >this would run faster than accessing a file system via the hard drive. The >only >drawback is keeping power up to the box, but with UPSs and the reliable >hardware available now, the risk would be worth the extra speed for certain >applications.
Like you noted at first, what you just descibed are available, but for a price. I like your idea of trying to do this with standard parts, and am curious what you find out. However, keep in mind that any RAM you devote as a drive can't be used as core memory by UNIX or Linux. This could conceivably cause more harm than good in many situations. Also, when using a RAM drive you will typically just store a very specific subset of your files on it, such as index files for a database. If you store an entire file system then you will be wasting memory on files rarely or even perhaps never accessed. That aside this is a good idea! I am pretty sure that Linux already has the ability to use RAM as a file system? I think there is some kind of driver already in the kernel for this, but I'm too lazy to look. How about doing this: 1. Linux boot with minimal file system 2. Kernel brings up RAM file system 3. init uncompress usr_local.tgz into RAM file system 4. Linux completes boot-up All done. Good first step? If you get this working then you are 90% done with the hard part. --- Dustin Puryear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Puryear Information Technology Windows, UNIX, and IT Consulting http://www.puryear-it.com
