[ugm6hr]

Originally Posted by jpph

I tested the ramdisk for firefox, the only thing you need to do is to put in about:config :
browser.cache.disk.parent_directory , type : string, = /var/lock

EDIT: do not forget to delete everything in your old cache ,
something like : ~/.mozilla/web browser/611380dd.default/Cache/

In case other people have never edited FF about:config before:

Just type "about:config" in the url address bar
Agree to be careful at the prompt
Right-click under the Preference Name section and select "New -> String"
Enter "browser.cache.disk.parent_directory" as Preference Name
Enter "/var/lock" as string

It took me a while to work out how to edit a config that didn't already exist!

[armon]

Just as a heads up, you can achieve the same thing with much less effort.

In about:config set browser.cache.disk.enable to false. This will disable on-disk caching, and only use memory for the cache. This is probably faster than using a ramdisk, because you avoid the overhead of going Firefox -> Disk -> OS -> RAM, and instead just go Firefox -> Ram.

Don't get me wrong though, I have /tmp and /var/tmp mounted as a ramdisk as well.

[jpph]

this is not exactly the same : you will have less cache, and you will loose the cache when you restart firefox. With a ram disk, you will loose it only when you shutdown/reboot the machine...

[armon]

If you are concerned with the size of the cache you could modify browser.cache.memory.capacity. Since the cache is mostly for the back and forward button, there is no real need for a large cache since most users only go 2-3 pages back at any given time.

[parodielin]

Hi,

Creating a ramdisk to limit writting on SSD is great. I added the line "none ...." mentioned above to create a 1 gb ramdisk for my ubuntu 8.10. After that, using df - h I saw "none 1g... " so it is successfully created and mounted to /tmp.

My newbie question is that could I delete the /tmp directory on the SSD? It has 7xx mb files in it and I'd like to free some spaces on my 4 gb ssd.

Thanks!

Came across this article on ramdisk

http://www.ubuntu-eee.com/wiki/index.ph ... lash_Drive

It uses the following commands in /etc/fstab

tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0
tmpfs /var/tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0
tmpfs /var/log tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=0755 0 0
tmpfs /var/log/apt tmpfs defaults,noatime 0 0

none /var/cache unionfs dirs=/tmp:/var/cache=ro 0 0

any comments?

[sheltron5000]

Can you guys who understand the mechanics of all these different solutions do a pro/con compairson?

Thanks for all your expertise!

[armon]

Sure, here is the Pro/Cons of a ramdisk

Pros:
+ Improved Battery life, disk access uses more power than memory
+ Faster system, it is _much_ faster to access memory than a disk
+ Less wear on the SSD, there is a fixed number of writes to a SSD before they die, memory has no such limit

Cons:
- You have limited memory compared to disk, and you are using more memory
- Anything on your ramdisk will be deleted on reboot / shutdown

So, really if you have a decent amount of memory there really is no reason not to use a ramdisk...

[jpph]

On an other hand, if you have plenty of RAM you can leave it as it is. The kernel will use all available memory as a io buffer (if you read twice the same thing on the disk, it will be only physically read once on the hardrive, the next time it will be still in memory).