On Sat, May 26, 2012 at 10:17 PM, Dale <[email protected]> wrote: > Neil Bothwick wrote: >> On Sat, 26 May 2012 22:08:48 +0200, Jarry wrote: >> >>> I suppose default size for tmpfs is half of physical memory, >>> if it is not configured somewhere else. >> >> It is, but that is the default maximum size, a tmpfs filesystem uses >> only as much memory as its contents require. >> >>> BTW, is there any way to turn this great feature off? >>> What is it good for? I do not see any advantage in having >>> /run on tmpfs... >> >> It makes sure that /run is available and writeable early in the boot >> process, whereas /var/run may not be and / may be mounted ro. >> >> > > > Mine wouldn't be since I have /var on a separate partition. I guess the > devs are getting ready for the ultimate screwup udev and friends is > putting in place. Oh well. This is life.
TBH, there are other occasions for / to be read-only. LiveCDs, for example, where your entire filesystem is (at least initially) R/O. A read-only network filesystem (or disk image) mount in thin clients. That kind of thing. > > I just hope it never goes bonkers and tries to use half my ram. lol If > it did that while compiling LOo, that could be interesting. :/ tmpfs specifically allows pages in it to be swapped out to disk, so if you have a large amount of swap, you shouldn't have a problem. FWIW, I try to avoid swap on my servers, but I try to keep my desktop and dual-role boxes with at least 1xRAM in SWAP, just in case I someday decide to experiment with suspend-to-disk. I rarely (if ever) touch it, but it's there if I need it. -- :wq
