HOW TO: mount /tmp to ram for increased preformance.

If you watch a lot of youtube video's or run a lot of programs that cache to /tmp you will notice that it can be incredibly slow while multi-tasking because the other programs are using the disk too. As long as you have enough ram you can mount /tmp as to your ram. However, use at your own risk - programs that cache backup data to /tmp (Like firefox [although open office does not]) will not be able to restore your previous session after rebooting. If that is no problem then continue on reading.

Open your /etc/fstab as root in your favourite text editor (I will be using gedit because it is by far the most simple) by launching it from the terminal.

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

Add this line to the end.

##RAMDISK##
none /tmp tmpfs defaults,size=424m 0 0

You can change the size to whatever amount you want in megabytes but do not go over half of your ram. <Ctrl>+<s> and <Ctrl>+<q>

Reboot, yes this is needed, you can mount -a but its pointless because then your xserver will crash because the display property will become unset.

Enjoy much faster website loads!

Also a tip for youtube users, the video is stores in /tmp so you dont need to use a flash down-loader to save a youtube video - just copy the file to your folder of choice after watching it.

EDIT*

The size parameter is optional as I have found out from experience so you might want to use this instead to save RAM!

##RAMDISK##
none /tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0

EDIT**

Okay I just found out how to do this without rebooting but its not quite as simple. Continue from the last step before rebooting, exit everything, and <ctrl>+<F1>. Enter your username and password. Run these commands.

sudo -i
gdm stop
rm -fR /tmp/*
mount /tmp ##or mount -a
gdm restart

EDIT*** Do not use this trick if you use proprietary types of enterprise software, because they store files in /tmp for security reasons.

not sure about the value of this (RAM caches disk anyway), but you certainly don't need the 1 and 2 at the end.

From man /etc/fstab:

The fifth field, (fs_freq), is used for these filesystems by the dump(8) com&#8208; mand to determine which filesystems need to be dumped. If the fifth field is not present, a value of zero is returned and dump will assume that the filesystem does not need to be dumped.

The sixth field, (fs_passno), is used by the fsck(8) program to determine the order in which filesystem checks are done at reboot time. The root filesys&#8208; tem should be specified with a fs_passno of 1, and other filesystems should have a fs_passno of 2. Filesystems within a drive will be checked sequen&#8208; tially, but filesystems on different drives will be checked at the same time to utilize parallelism available in the hardware. If the sixth field is not present or zero, a value of zero is returned and fsck will assume that the filesystem does not need to be checked.

oh noes!!!!!!!!!! my /etc/fstab disappeared after using webmin (and looking to update it)!!!!!!!!!!!! better not restart no matter what till I fix this lol!

oh phew I just typed /ect/fstab instead of /etc/fstab rofl

Thanks! Works like a charm!

modmadmike said: If you watch a lot of youtube video's or run a lot of programs that cache to /tmp you will notice that it can be incredibly slow while multi-tasking because the other programs are using the disk too. As long as you have enough ram you can mount /tmp as a ramdisk.

.......

A tmpfs mount is NOT a "ramdisk" mount. A "ramdisk" is a totally different thing that is set up with a kernel boot parameter and removes a set amount of RAM for use.

A tmpfs mount will use your Virtual Memory as required, which will be RAM as well as Swap, so in a heavily loaded system it could well be using disk space.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMPFS

Using /tmp in this manner can certainly improve "performance", but it also can cause issues in things like DVD creation if a temporary image file (~8GB) happens to be created in that folder.....

I am thinking about trying this out, since I have 2gb ram. If I wast to reverse the changes I made, I am assuming I would only have to enter:

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

and then delete the following line of code (the code I previously added). Is that correct?

##RAMDISK## none /tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0 :popcorn:

Cowchip7 said: I am thinking about trying this out, since I have 2gb ram. If I wast to reverse the changes I made, I am assuming I would only have to enter:

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

and then delete the following line of code (the code I previously added). Is that correct?

##RAMDISK## none /tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0 :popcorn:

Yep

dcstar said: A tmpfs mount is NOT a "ramdisk" mount. A "ramdisk" is a totally different thing that is set up with a kernel boot parameter and removes a set amount of RAM for use.

A tmpfs mount will use your Virtual Memory as required, which will be RAM as well as Swap, so in a heavily loaded system it could well be using disk space.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMPFS

Using /tmp in this manner can certainly improve "performance", but it also can cause issues in things like DVD creation if a temporary image file (~8GB) happens to be created in that folder.....

Thanks for pointing that out, but at the time it seemed simpler to use the term "ramdisk" lol

Deleted

modmadmike said: If you watch a lot of youtube video's or run a lot of programs that cache to /tmp you will notice that it can be incredibly slow while multi-tasking because the other programs are using the disk too. As long as you have enough ram you can mount /tmp as to your ram. However, use at your own risk - programs that cache backup data to /tmp (Like firefox [although open office does not]) will not be able to restore your previous session after rebooting. If that is no problem then continue on reading.

Open your /etc/fstab as root in your favourite text editor (I will be using gedit because it is by far the most simple) by launching it from the terminal.

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

Add this line to the end.

##RAMDISK##
none /tmp tmpfs defaults,size=424m 0 0

You can change the size to whatever amount you want in megabytes but do not go over half of your ram. <Ctrl>+<s> and <Ctrl>+<q>

Reboot, yes this is needed, you can mount -a but its pointless because then your xserver will crash because the display property will become unset.

Enjoy much faster website loads!

Also a tip for youtube users, the video is stores in /tmp so you dont need to use a flash down-loader to save a youtube video - just copy the file to your folder of choice after watching it.

EDIT*

The size parameter is optional as I have found out from experience so you might want to use this instead to save RAM!

##RAMDISK##
none /tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0

EDIT**

Okay I just found out how to do this without rebooting but its not quite as simple. Continue from the last step before rebooting, exit everything, and <ctrl>+<F1>. Enter your username and password. Run these commands.

sudo -i
gdm stop
rm -fR /tmp/*
mount /tmp ##or mount -a
gdm restart

EDIT*** Do not use this trick if you use proprietary types of enterprise software, because they store files in /tmp for security reasons.

Thanks

dcstar said: A tmpfs mount is NOT a "ramdisk" mount. A "ramdisk" is a totally different thing that is set up with a kernel boot parameter and removes a set amount of RAM for use.

A tmpfs mount will use your Virtual Memory as required, which will be RAM as well as Swap, so in a heavily loaded system it could well be using disk space.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMPFS

Using /tmp in this manner can certainly improve "performance", but it also can cause issues in things like DVD creation if a temporary image file (~8GB) happens to be created in that folder.....

Do you know how to setup a real ramdisk?