Date: Sat, 10 Oct 2009 23:00:18 +0100 From: RW <rwmaillists@googlemail.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: / almost out of space just after installation Message-ID: <20091010230018.435dc8f2@gumby.homeunix.com> In-Reply-To: <20091010172731.GB4669@guilt.hydra> References: <e277d6c80910082339m229ecd6bqfbadd12a6fb7f116@mail.gmail.com> <200910091528.n99FS90I025341@lurza.secnetix.de> <20091009221522.2fbcd123@gumby.homeunix.com> <20091010172731.GB4669@guilt.hydra>
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On Sat, 10 Oct 2009 11:27:31 -0600 Chad Perrin <perrin@apotheon.com> wrote: > On Fri, Oct 09, 2009 at 10:15:22PM +0100, RW wrote: > > On Fri, 9 Oct 2009 17:28:09 +0200 (CEST) > > Oliver Fromme <olli@lurza.secnetix.de> wrote: > > > Depending on the size of installed RAM, /tmp could also > > > be a memory disk by default. > > > > I don't see why it should depend on the amount of RAM, since it > > would normally be swap-backed. > > It should depend on the amount of RAM because putting /tmp in memory > takes away from the RAM available to the rest of the system. If your > system typically runs processes that consume a lot of RAM (like > Firefox, ha ha), your system could bog down a lot during typical use > if you use a RAM disk for /tmp without considering how much RAM you > have and need to use. By default, I think, /tmp should be on the > hard drive -- perhaps with an option when partitioning to set it up > to use RAM instead of physical storage. But it's not really a true RAM disk unless you use specify a malloc backed md device - which you should never do because it keeps the /tmp data in RAM unconditionally. tmpfs and swap-backed md devices normally used for /tmp are similar to conventional partitions in that they are disk-based storage cached in RAM. The difference is that because swap is ephemeral there's no need to commit updates to the backing store except for memory management reasons. Most people's /tmp requirements are pretty modest compared to modern swap and RAM sizes, but my /tmp device is ~3 times RAM size and it doesn't seem to create problems when I fill it.
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