[gentoo-dev] A few ideas...

[gentoo-dev] A few ideas...

[Christian Axelsson]

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Hi!

I was sitting and thinking of simplifying the process of having / (and maybe
other partitions) running for a RAM-disk that can be stored on NFS, cdrom, and
maybe even a harddrive (with encrypted fs).

I've never played around with ramdisks and I wonder how much that needs to be
done to make a little shellscript for gentoo that copies down / and other
selected partitions to a iso or something and configures the rest of the system
to boot from that later on.
Another problem might be updating the image, therefor it would be nice with a
single command to rewrite the whole image :)

Anyone wanna help me on this as I have time and would like a feature like that
on some of my computers.

As I said before, it would be nice to have it as a integrated feature of gentoo,
making it alot easier to work with.

-- 
Christan Axelsson
smiler@lanil.mine.nu

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Re: [gentoo-dev] A few ideas...

[Celestial Wizard]

Christian Axelsson wrote:

<snip>
> I was sitting and thinking of simplifying the process of having / (and maybe
> other partitions) running for a RAM-disk that can be stored on NFS, cdrom, and
> maybe even a harddrive (with encrypted fs).
</snip>


I'm not sure I see why you would want to do this?

One of the things I have thought might be useful with regard to RAM 
disks is how Sorceror Linux uses them.  Instead of doing compiles on 
disk, why not make it on a tmpfs RAM disk?  For those with enough 
memory, it is extremely fast (no real I/O), and for those that don't it 
can use swap.  And there is no reason why this can't be an option for 
those that wish it.  Put an option in the make.profile ?


-- 

Celestial Wizard

RedHat Certified Engineer

President - South East Brisbane Linux Users Group
http://www.seblug.org/


--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] A few ideas...

[Maik Schreiber]

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> One of the things I have thought might be useful with regard to RAM 
> disks is how Sorceror Linux uses them.  Instead of doing compiles on 
> disk, why not make it on a tmpfs RAM disk?  For those with enough 
> memory, it is extremely fast (no real I/O), and for those that don't it 
> can use swap.  And there is no reason why this can't be an option for 
> those that wish it.  Put an option in the make.profile ?

It's as easy as setting PORTAGE_TMPDIR in /etc/make.conf

-- 
Maik Schreiber, Gentoo Linux Developer
http://www.gentoo.org
mailto:blizzy@gentoo.org

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Re: [gentoo-dev] A few ideas...

[Christian Axelsson]

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On Thu, 02 Jan 2003 23:55:44 +1000
Celestial Wizard <gentoo@dev.celestialwizard.org> wrote:

<snip>
  > I'm not sure I see why you would want to do this?
</snip>

For ie. servers without harddrives, they have pretty static content and sdram is
pretty cheap. I would get a nice speedgain and I could get rid of the annoying
sound of spinning harddrives.

-- 
Christan Axelsson
smiler@lanil.mine.nu

If it ain't broken, I cant fix it.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] A few ideas...

[Christian Axelsson]

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On Thu, 2 Jan 2003 23:46:09 +1000
Mark Constable <markc@renta.net> wrote:

<snip>
  > Any 2.4 kernel can have...
  > 
  > tmpfs           /dev/shm        tmpfs   size=128m               0 0
</snip>

Is it possible to have a larger tmpfs? If yes, what is the maxsize?

The rest looks like a good start, I'll see what magic I can do with it :)

-- 
Christan Axelsson
smiler@lanil.mine.nu

If it ain't broken, I cant fix it.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] A few ideas...

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Thursday 02 January 2003 16:13, Christian Axelsson wrote:
> On Thu, 2 Jan 2003 23:46:09 +1000
> Mark Constable <markc@renta.net> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>   > Any 2.4 kernel can have...
>   >
>   > tmpfs           /dev/shm        tmpfs   size=128m               0 0
>
> </snip>
>
> Is it possible to have a larger tmpfs? If yes, what is the maxsize?
>
> The rest looks like a good start, I'll see what magic I can do with it :)

Yes, the maximum is <amount of swap + amount of real memory - (amount of 
memory you want to keep + amount of kernel memory)> There is no problem in 
setting it higher though until it is actually used. The default is actually 
an unlimited size.

Paul

-- 
Paul de Vrieze
Junior Researcher
Mail: pauldv@cs.kun.nl
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net

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Re: [gentoo-dev] A few ideas...

[Martin Schlemmer]

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On Thu, 2 Jan 2003 13:56:40 +0100
Christian Axelsson <smiler@lanil.mine.nu> wrote:

> Hi!
> 
> I was sitting and thinking of simplifying the process of having / (and
> maybe other partitions) running for a RAM-disk that can be stored on
> NFS, cdrom, and maybe even a harddrive (with encrypted fs).
> 
> I've never played around with ramdisks and I wonder how much that
> needs to be done to make a little shellscript for gentoo that copies
> down / and other selected partitions to a iso or something and
> configures the rest of the system to boot from that later on.
> Another problem might be updating the image, therefor it would be nice
> with a single command to rewrite the whole image :)
> 
> Anyone wanna help me on this as I have time and would like a feature
> like that on some of my computers.
> 
> As I said before, it would be nice to have it as a integrated feature
> of gentoo, making it alot easier to work with.
> 

Check out the Adelie cluster project at:

  http://www.cerca.umontreal.ca/hpc/en/projects/adelie/index.html

Support for that have been integrated, and they use diskless clusters
...


> -- 
> Christan Axelsson
> smiler@lanil.mine.nu
> 


-- 

Martin Schlemmer
Gentoo Linux Developer, Desktop/System Team Developer
Cape Town, South Africa


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Re: [gentoo-dev] A few ideas...

[Christian Axelsson]

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On Fri, 3 Jan 2003 00:06:55 +0200
Martin Schlemmer <azarah@gentoo.org> wrote:

<snip>
> Check out the Adelie cluster project at:
> 
>   http://www.cerca.umontreal.ca/hpc/en/projects/adelie/index.html
> 
> Support for that have been integrated, and they use diskless clusters
</snip>

Awww! Great! This is what I've been looking for, thanks =)

-- 
Christan Axelsson
smiler@lanil.mine.nu

If it ain't broken, I cant fix it.

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