[ltp] how to silence the hard drive

[Martin Schuster (IFKL IT OS DSM CD)]

Volker Krueger wrote:
> [...]
> Now, i discovered the following possible entries for /etc/fstab:
> 
> tmpfs /var/log tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0
> tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0
> tmpfs /var/tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0
> 
> this generates a ram-disk for each mounted tmpfs, i.e., all temporary
> stuff goes into the laptop's memory so that the HD is not woken up anymore.
> 
/tmp in RAM is a good idea (at least if you have enough RAM :)

/var/tmp is for "Temporary files preserved between system reboots" =>
maybe shouldn't go to RAM, see
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#VARTMPTEMPORARYFILESPRESERVEDBETWEE

btw: I wouldn't use "noatime" -- updating the timestamp in RAM is fast,
and you might need it to automatically cleanup e.g. files that haven't
been accessed for 7 days.

> to enfore firefox to use /tmp, one can do the following:
> 
Firefox already can use RAM for caching, no need for a tmpfs.
In FF3 you can configure it using the Preferences dialog, can't find
it in FF3.5 right now, but in about:config you have
browser.cache.disk.enable         (set to "false")
browser.cache.memory.enable       (set to "true")
browser.cache.memory.capacity     (in KiB, e.g. 32786 for 32MiB)

hth,
-- 
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