to...@tuxteam.de (12023-04-19): > What I didn't like from the post is that it doesn't clearly > state the downsides. Too much handwaving and repetition that > "there are downsides" (well, duh), that "some applications > rely on... " (what?). Then he goes on to explain alternatives.
“If I can't write gigabytes files, it's completely and utterly useless” is what I managed to read. I am not that surprised to find this level of argumentation in a text that announces its unbalanced conclusion in the title. Like all those “foobar considered harmful” essays: they usually blame a caricature of the other side, they argue against the worst possible version of the idea and thus miss the points of their proponents. I have only a limited sympathy for the self-styled rational “community”, but their principle of “steelmaning” the other side argument before trying to reply is a good one. > The upsides aren't that spectacular either. If you've enough > RAM, file system caching is so good that tmpfs will only be > marginally faster: The write path to the disk will be a bit > clearer. There will be a bit less CPU usage if your /tmp would > be otherwise on a LUKS partition (mine would). Another minor difference that can be a minor upside or downside depending on the use case: with a tmpfs, the files disappear when the computer is turned off, with a real filesystem they disappear when it is turned on. (I do not know if Debian has provisions to format a /tmp partition with an ephemeral encryption key on boot, like it has for the swap.) Regards, -- Nicolas George
