Apparently, though unproven, at 14:37 on Wednesday 20 April 2011, Joost Roeleveld did opine thusly:
> On Wednesday 20 April 2011 11:25:27 Joost Roeleveld wrote: > > On Wednesday 20 April 2011 03:42:13 Dale wrote: > > > Joost Roeleveld wrote: > > > > On Tuesday 19 April 2011 17:54:02 Dale wrote: > > > >> Kfir Lavi wrote: > > > >>> I do a lot of compiling on my laptop using Catalyst for > > > >>> embedded. > > > >>> I upgraded my RAM to 8GB (2x4GB = 90$ ebay). > > > >>> I mount /var/tmp as tmpfs. > > > >>> Thats how I keep my SSD ;) > > > >>> > > > >>> Kfir > > > >>> > > > >>> -- > > > >>> Poison [BLX] > > > >>> Joshua M. Murphy > > > >> > > > >> I got 16Gbs in my rig and I mounted portages work directory on > > > >> tmpfs, > > > >> it > > > >> was actually slower. That is likely a good idea to keep from > > > >> wearing > > > >> out the SSD but it doesn't seem to make anything compile faster. > > > > > > > > Strange, it actually got faster on mine when doing that. > > > > Did you mount with "noatime"? :) > > > > > > > > -- > > > > Joost > > > > > > Yep. It actually took a few seconds longer compiling in memory. I > > > thought that was weird to tho. It doesn't make much sense to me. > > > > > > Dale > > > > > > :-) :-) > > > > Hmm... > > Will be doing some timing-tests then.... > > Openoffice is a good one for that ;) > > Ok, just done the tests. using tmpfs for /var/tmp/portage is quicker, but > not by much. > > Without TMPFS: > # time emerge -v openoffice > real 32m44.742s > user 20m18.320s > sys 5m38.000s > > With TMPFS: > # mount -onoatime,size=7G -ttmpfs none /var/tmp/portage > # time emerge -v openoffice > real 31m30.835s > user 20m3.510s > sys 5m38.030s > > Specification of this machine: > 12GB RAM > Quad Core Xeon W3565 @ 3.2Ghz with HT enabled > > There are 2 drives in stripe-mode (software RAID-0) which does speed up the > I/O a lot. I'd say the entirety of /var/tmp/portage for your OOo build fits into your ram disk cache so very little actual disk IO is happening. I also noticed before switching to libreoffice-bin that the ooo build was largely cpu-bound anyway (disk light flashed seldom) -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
