Linux speed up by moving files to ramdisk at start
I have more than enough ram in my computer (8GB), which hardly gets used. In the most cases my desktop and apps use up in 2-3GBs out of it, on the other hand I do not have an SSD.
My system is 64bit Debian Wheezy.
I wonder if there is any framework which copy regularly used files like thunderbird, firefox, openoffice, vlc, pidgin to a ramdisk at every start to speed up access.
This is obviously doable by with an init shellscript after each boot then have symlinks setup for those files later on but maybe there is a complete solution to do this already...
Question2:
Are there any optimizations for the linux kernel (3.14) which can take advantage of large amount of memory better than a stock kernel? If so what are those?
Question3:
In this case disabling swap partition completely is a good idea right?
Thanks
linux debian ramdisk
migrated from serverfault.com Oct 3 '14 at 12:10
This question came from our site for system and network administrators.
add a comment |
I have more than enough ram in my computer (8GB), which hardly gets used. In the most cases my desktop and apps use up in 2-3GBs out of it, on the other hand I do not have an SSD.
My system is 64bit Debian Wheezy.
I wonder if there is any framework which copy regularly used files like thunderbird, firefox, openoffice, vlc, pidgin to a ramdisk at every start to speed up access.
This is obviously doable by with an init shellscript after each boot then have symlinks setup for those files later on but maybe there is a complete solution to do this already...
Question2:
Are there any optimizations for the linux kernel (3.14) which can take advantage of large amount of memory better than a stock kernel? If so what are those?
Question3:
In this case disabling swap partition completely is a good idea right?
Thanks
linux debian ramdisk
migrated from serverfault.com Oct 3 '14 at 12:10
This question came from our site for system and network administrators.
Buying an SSD is much easier. And they're pretty cheap now.
– Michael Hampton
Oct 3 '14 at 15:41
add a comment |
I have more than enough ram in my computer (8GB), which hardly gets used. In the most cases my desktop and apps use up in 2-3GBs out of it, on the other hand I do not have an SSD.
My system is 64bit Debian Wheezy.
I wonder if there is any framework which copy regularly used files like thunderbird, firefox, openoffice, vlc, pidgin to a ramdisk at every start to speed up access.
This is obviously doable by with an init shellscript after each boot then have symlinks setup for those files later on but maybe there is a complete solution to do this already...
Question2:
Are there any optimizations for the linux kernel (3.14) which can take advantage of large amount of memory better than a stock kernel? If so what are those?
Question3:
In this case disabling swap partition completely is a good idea right?
Thanks
linux debian ramdisk
I have more than enough ram in my computer (8GB), which hardly gets used. In the most cases my desktop and apps use up in 2-3GBs out of it, on the other hand I do not have an SSD.
My system is 64bit Debian Wheezy.
I wonder if there is any framework which copy regularly used files like thunderbird, firefox, openoffice, vlc, pidgin to a ramdisk at every start to speed up access.
This is obviously doable by with an init shellscript after each boot then have symlinks setup for those files later on but maybe there is a complete solution to do this already...
Question2:
Are there any optimizations for the linux kernel (3.14) which can take advantage of large amount of memory better than a stock kernel? If so what are those?
Question3:
In this case disabling swap partition completely is a good idea right?
Thanks
linux debian ramdisk
linux debian ramdisk
asked Oct 3 '14 at 10:49
naturelle
migrated from serverfault.com Oct 3 '14 at 12:10
This question came from our site for system and network administrators.
migrated from serverfault.com Oct 3 '14 at 12:10
This question came from our site for system and network administrators.
Buying an SSD is much easier. And they're pretty cheap now.
– Michael Hampton
Oct 3 '14 at 15:41
add a comment |
Buying an SSD is much easier. And they're pretty cheap now.
– Michael Hampton
Oct 3 '14 at 15:41
Buying an SSD is much easier. And they're pretty cheap now.
– Michael Hampton
Oct 3 '14 at 15:41
Buying an SSD is much easier. And they're pretty cheap now.
– Michael Hampton
Oct 3 '14 at 15:41
add a comment |
3 Answers
3
active
oldest
votes
any framework which copy regularly used files
Simply cat'ing them into /dev/null will populate the VFS cache. But this degrades even in the absence of any further I/O or memory demand. If it were me, I might consider creating a tmpfs then creating a unionfs with the storage device filesystem containing the content to cache - rather than messing around with symlinks (but you still need to populate it.
A much simpler solution would be to use the tmpfs as a bcache device. (but make sure you destroy and rebuild the bcache during the startup sequence).
Question 2: there are things you can do to tune the VFS, but I suspect they won't have much impact.
Qusetion 3: Absolutely not - you'll get best usage out of any caching if you preserve it between power cycles - i.e. using hibernate-to-disk rather than a shutdown/restart - and this (normally) uses swap.
answered Oct 3 '14 at 12:35
symcbean
2,27911121
add a comment |
There are different readahead programs for Linux, which pre-fetch disk memory.
They are called e.g. readahead-fedora and preload.
The was also systemd-readahead for systemd-based init systems, but it was removed again in more recent versions.
answered Oct 6 '14 at 9:22
jofel
20.1k34780
The above link is dead. I assume it's because systemd's readahead implementation has been removed.
– Eric Seastrand
12 hours ago
add a comment |
In this case disabling swap partition completely is a good idea right?
Yes, you may move your swap from HDD/SDD to RAM. The latest Linux kernels include ZRAM module inside, so you may use your swap in RAM. That will give you much better speed of swapping operations, but will in some times increase CPU load.
You may read about it on https://wiki.debian.org/ZRam
answered Oct 3 '14 at 16:26
ihor_dvoretskyi
1,713913
add a comment |
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3 Answers
3
active
oldest
votes
3 Answers
3
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
any framework which copy regularly used files
Simply cat'ing them into /dev/null will populate the VFS cache. But this degrades even in the absence of any further I/O or memory demand. If it were me, I might consider creating a tmpfs then creating a unionfs with the storage device filesystem containing the content to cache - rather than messing around with symlinks (but you still need to populate it.
A much simpler solution would be to use the tmpfs as a bcache device. (but make sure you destroy and rebuild the bcache during the startup sequence).
Question 2: there are things you can do to tune the VFS, but I suspect they won't have much impact.
Qusetion 3: Absolutely not - you'll get best usage out of any caching if you preserve it between power cycles - i.e. using hibernate-to-disk rather than a shutdown/restart - and this (normally) uses swap.
answered Oct 3 '14 at 12:35
symcbean
2,27911121
add a comment |
any framework which copy regularly used files
Simply cat'ing them into /dev/null will populate the VFS cache. But this degrades even in the absence of any further I/O or memory demand. If it were me, I might consider creating a tmpfs then creating a unionfs with the storage device filesystem containing the content to cache - rather than messing around with symlinks (but you still need to populate it.
A much simpler solution would be to use the tmpfs as a bcache device. (but make sure you destroy and rebuild the bcache during the startup sequence).
Question 2: there are things you can do to tune the VFS, but I suspect they won't have much impact.
Qusetion 3: Absolutely not - you'll get best usage out of any caching if you preserve it between power cycles - i.e. using hibernate-to-disk rather than a shutdown/restart - and this (normally) uses swap.
answered Oct 3 '14 at 12:35
symcbean
2,27911121
add a comment |
any framework which copy regularly used files
Simply cat'ing them into /dev/null will populate the VFS cache. But this degrades even in the absence of any further I/O or memory demand. If it were me, I might consider creating a tmpfs then creating a unionfs with the storage device filesystem containing the content to cache - rather than messing around with symlinks (but you still need to populate it.
A much simpler solution would be to use the tmpfs as a bcache device. (but make sure you destroy and rebuild the bcache during the startup sequence).
Question 2: there are things you can do to tune the VFS, but I suspect they won't have much impact.
Qusetion 3: Absolutely not - you'll get best usage out of any caching if you preserve it between power cycles - i.e. using hibernate-to-disk rather than a shutdown/restart - and this (normally) uses swap.
answered Oct 3 '14 at 12:35
symcbean
2,27911121
any framework which copy regularly used files
Simply cat'ing them into /dev/null will populate the VFS cache. But this degrades even in the absence of any further I/O or memory demand. If it were me, I might consider creating a tmpfs then creating a unionfs with the storage device filesystem containing the content to cache - rather than messing around with symlinks (but you still need to populate it.
A much simpler solution would be to use the tmpfs as a bcache device. (but make sure you destroy and rebuild the bcache during the startup sequence).
Question 2: there are things you can do to tune the VFS, but I suspect they won't have much impact.
Qusetion 3: Absolutely not - you'll get best usage out of any caching if you preserve it between power cycles - i.e. using hibernate-to-disk rather than a shutdown/restart - and this (normally) uses swap.
answered Oct 3 '14 at 12:35
symcbean
2,27911121
edited Oct 6 '14 at 8:43
answered Oct 3 '14 at 12:35
symcbean
2,27911121
answered Oct 3 '14 at 12:35
symcbean
2,27911121
answered Oct 3 '14 at 12:35
symcbean
2,27911121
2,27911121
add a comment |
add a comment |
There are different readahead programs for Linux, which pre-fetch disk memory.
They are called e.g. readahead-fedora and preload.
The was also systemd-readahead for systemd-based init systems, but it was removed again in more recent versions.
answered Oct 6 '14 at 9:22
jofel
20.1k34780
The above link is dead. I assume it's because systemd's readahead implementation has been removed.
– Eric Seastrand
12 hours ago
add a comment |
There are different readahead programs for Linux, which pre-fetch disk memory.
They are called e.g. readahead-fedora and preload.
The was also systemd-readahead for systemd-based init systems, but it was removed again in more recent versions.
answered Oct 6 '14 at 9:22
jofel
20.1k34780
The above link is dead. I assume it's because systemd's readahead implementation has been removed.
– Eric Seastrand
12 hours ago
add a comment |
There are different readahead programs for Linux, which pre-fetch disk memory.
They are called e.g. readahead-fedora and preload.
The was also systemd-readahead for systemd-based init systems, but it was removed again in more recent versions.
answered Oct 6 '14 at 9:22
jofel
20.1k34780
There are different readahead programs for Linux, which pre-fetch disk memory.
They are called e.g. readahead-fedora and preload.
The was also systemd-readahead for systemd-based init systems, but it was removed again in more recent versions.
answered Oct 6 '14 at 9:22
jofel
20.1k34780
edited 9 mins ago
answered Oct 6 '14 at 9:22
jofel
20.1k34780
answered Oct 6 '14 at 9:22
jofel
20.1k34780
answered Oct 6 '14 at 9:22
jofel
20.1k34780
20.1k34780
The above link is dead. I assume it's because systemd's readahead implementation has been removed.
– Eric Seastrand
12 hours ago
add a comment |
The above link is dead. I assume it's because systemd's readahead implementation has been removed.
– Eric Seastrand
12 hours ago
The above link is dead. I assume it's because systemd's readahead implementation has been removed.
– Eric Seastrand
12 hours ago
The above link is dead. I assume it's because systemd's readahead implementation has been removed.
– Eric Seastrand
12 hours ago
add a comment |
In this case disabling swap partition completely is a good idea right?
Yes, you may move your swap from HDD/SDD to RAM. The latest Linux kernels include ZRAM module inside, so you may use your swap in RAM. That will give you much better speed of swapping operations, but will in some times increase CPU load.
You may read about it on https://wiki.debian.org/ZRam
answered Oct 3 '14 at 16:26
ihor_dvoretskyi
1,713913
add a comment |
In this case disabling swap partition completely is a good idea right?
Yes, you may move your swap from HDD/SDD to RAM. The latest Linux kernels include ZRAM module inside, so you may use your swap in RAM. That will give you much better speed of swapping operations, but will in some times increase CPU load.
You may read about it on https://wiki.debian.org/ZRam
answered Oct 3 '14 at 16:26
ihor_dvoretskyi
1,713913
add a comment |
In this case disabling swap partition completely is a good idea right?
Yes, you may move your swap from HDD/SDD to RAM. The latest Linux kernels include ZRAM module inside, so you may use your swap in RAM. That will give you much better speed of swapping operations, but will in some times increase CPU load.
You may read about it on https://wiki.debian.org/ZRam
answered Oct 3 '14 at 16:26
ihor_dvoretskyi
1,713913
In this case disabling swap partition completely is a good idea right?
Yes, you may move your swap from HDD/SDD to RAM. The latest Linux kernels include ZRAM module inside, so you may use your swap in RAM. That will give you much better speed of swapping operations, but will in some times increase CPU load.
You may read about it on https://wiki.debian.org/ZRam
answered Oct 3 '14 at 16:26
ihor_dvoretskyi
1,713913
answered Oct 3 '14 at 16:26
ihor_dvoretskyi
1,713913
answered Oct 3 '14 at 16:26
ihor_dvoretskyi
1,713913
answered Oct 3 '14 at 16:26
ihor_dvoretskyi
1,713913
1,713913
add a comment |
add a comment |
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Buying an SSD is much easier. And they're pretty cheap now.
– Michael Hampton
Oct 3 '14 at 15:41