Re: swap and /tmp

[Digby Tarvin <digbyt@acm.org>]

On Sat, May 06, 2006 at 06:11:16PM -0400, Dave Witbrodt wrote:
> Please correct me if I'm wrong:
> 
> About 2 years ago I started reading up about Linux when I was first 
> decided whether to try it, and which distro to use.  I took about a 
> year before I finally installed Debian last May.
> 
> During that time I remember reading that some programs that write to 
> CDs or DVDs were caching data in /tmp before burning.  It seems like 
> using tmpfs for /tmp under that kind of scenario would be a real 
> problem.  My old box would probably roll over and die, and my newer 
> one probably would if a DVD image was being built in /tmp.
> 
> That info is, admittedly, out of date... but I would want to take a 
> serious look into such things before putting /tmp on a tmpfs!

It really doesn't matter where these applications cache theire
temporary data. The only importance such considerations have is
in deciding how much space to allocate to your /tmp - it doesn't
matter weather it is stored on a disk partition or a ramfs filesystem.

I think you might be misunderstanding what ramfs does. 
using ramfs doesn't put any additional restrictions on
the maximum size of the temp partition. You just have to
add whatever space would have been used for a tmp partition
to your swap partition, and you will be able to support
just as many CD and DVD images.

The effect of using ramfs is to allow things to run faster by
removing any requirement to keep a complete filesystem image on
non-volatile media (disk), and to allow greater flexibility by
allowing disk space to be distributed between /tmp space and
backing store for memory on demand rather than being fixed at
installation time.

Regards,
DigbyT
-- 
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                          digbyt(at)digbyt.com
http://www.digbyt.com