Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 00:08:56 -0500 From: Lowell Gilbert <freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org> To: clutton <clutton@zoho.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD working from RAM (MFSROOT) as a Workstation. Message-ID: <447fy665uf.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> In-Reply-To: <1417734458.1772.1.camel@zoho.com> (clutton@zoho.com's message of "Fri, 05 Dec 2014 01:07:38 %2B0200") References: <1417734458.1772.1.camel@zoho.com>
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clutton <clutton@zoho.com> writes: > Is anyone use a FreeBSD as a Desktop working from RAM, using MFSROOT? That only speeds up the *first* load of each memory page mirroring a disk sector. After the system has been up a while, it's actually slower than running with a disk, because everything you actually use will have two copies in RAM: one on the disk image, and the one that's actually occupying normal resident pages. Furthermore, you have to load your whole root filesystem from disk before you start, even the parts you haven't used yet. I would expect that to give you a *slower* startup time. RAM is faster than SSD access, but the SSD is non-volatile, whereas the RAM needs to be repopulated from non-volatile storage every time you boot. And every page that is used has to get loaded into the RAM disk and *then* loaded into virtual memory. TL;DR: To run from RAM, you first have to load the RAM. The chances that an MFSROOT does this more efficiently (than starting directly from the nonvolatile disk) seem remote.
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