On Sat, May 05, 2012 at 01:03:13PM -0700, Martin Pitt wrote: > Hello Phillip, > > Phillip Susi [2012-01-13 15:39 -0500]: > > Bug #18661 has been requesting that /tmp be mounted as a tmpfs since > > 2005. Either this should finally be done, or marked as wontfix. I > > would like the TB to decide if this should be done or not. If not, > > please mark the bug as wontfix with the rationale, if yes, then it > > should be as simple as changing the default fstab file in the mountall > > package from fs type none to tmpfs for /tmp. > > Now that precise is out of the door, I think we should revisit this > question. A tmpfs /tmp/ is much more efficient for the bulk of stuff > that goes to /tmp than a real hard disk file system, as it avoids > disk wakeups, unnecessary IO, etc. > > The regression potential with that change is that there are programs > which assume that they have plenty of space in /tmp; e. g. Firefox > downloads things there, unless you use "Save as..". There might also > be CD burning programs, video encoders etc. which try to place huge > files there. So we need to identify those and fix them to put large > stuff into /var/tmp/ instead. > > In practice it doesn't seem to be so bad, though. I've been running > with a tmpfs /tmp for quite some months now without problems, but then > again my computer usage habits are fairly regular and presumably much > different from the average user (e. g. I don't do video editing or > CD/DVD burning at all).
I use a tmpfs /tmp on all of my systems, and have for several years without a problem. I use Chromium, which downloads things into $HOME, and I haven't encountered any problems with encoders and the like. > I think early quantal would be a great time to enable this, so that we > have some time to identify problematic programs. I agree. Another thing to consider is how large it should be, i.e. whether the default (1/2 RAM?) is suitable. > I heard that Fedora plans to enable this as well, so there's some > potential for collaboration and sharing results, too. Great! -- - mdz -- technical-board mailing list technical-board@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/technical-board
