Re: using Ramdisk

[M Watts]

Thomas Fehr wrote:
> Hi
>
> I'd like to use Lilypond in an interactive music learning program 
> where short response times are needed.  I think running Lilypond on a 
> ramdisk could help. Does anyone know how to do that?
>
> - Thomas
Working on Lilypond files in a ramdisk (which is not exactly what you 
asked for) sure saves a lot of disk thrashing -- helpful when you make a 
lot of mistakes, and have to run and rerun and rerun Lilypond on the 
same file, like me.

Assuming you run Linux, you already have around 16 ramdisks, though 
they're not activated by default.  See them with:

ls -lh /dev/ram*

Create a 16 MB ramdisk with

mkfs -t ext3 -q /dev/ram1 16384

Mount it with

mkdir -p /home/user/desktop/ramdisk
mount /dev/ram1 /home/user/desktop/ramdisk -o defaults,rw

modifying "/home/user/desktop" to suit your system/preferences.

To do this automatically when you power up your machine, add these lines 
to /etc/rc.local:

/sbin/mkfs mkfs -t ext3 -q /dev/ram1 16384
/bin/mount mount /dev/ram1 /home/user/desktop/ramdisk -o defaults,rw
/bin/chown user:root /home/user/desktop/ramdisk
/bin/chmod 0750 /home/user/desktop/ramdisk


Whether you use ramdisks or not, you can increase harddisk performance 
by enabling the 'noatime' option in /etc/fstab.  Whenever you read a 
file, you system also performs a writing operation, to store the time of 
last access.  Disable this by opening /etc/fstab, look for you root 
filesystem, and change where it says 'defaults' to 'defaults,noatime', 
then reboot and enjoy faster computing.