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In line with the idea of reducing how much it's written on SSD, some people suggest using tmpfs for lots of things, one of them can be the ~/.cache directory. Which must be implemented in a per-user basis or with some pre-mount script that would do such tmpfs mounts before each user login. But regardless, the point is that they may spare the SSD, but not the RAM, obviously. If you quit a cache-heavy program, its cache would still be there, leaving other programs you're running with less RAM to use....
NFS-RAMBOOT adapts my RAMBOOT hack to NFS root (PXE or not). On boot, it extracts an OS tarball from an nfs share into local RAM (recommended 3+GB of RAM). The result is like a very fast SSD.
Why do this? Compared to RAMBOOT, loading (and saving) the OS tarball over gigabit ethernet can be faster than a local hard drive or USB drive, if the file server has an SSD or a faster hard drive (compare 3.5" drives to 2.5" laptop drives, for example). Also, having the OS tarballs...
Previously, I described how to use one computer's RAM as an SSD (OS drive) for another computer. Here, I describe how to use one computer's RAM as SWAP for another computer. Bear in mind that even a RAM disk over gigabit ethernet isn't going to be as fast as a local SSD, but it's still faster and much more responsive than a local spinning hard drive.
This technique of using another computer's RAM as SWAP is a great way to augment RAMboot, as described here:
I have refined and updated my RAMboot how-to for Debian 8. Honestly, my previous how-to's still work fine for Debian 8, regardless of the switch to systemd. I have, however, tightened things up.
The basic concept is to boot from a local hard drive or USB drive, using a modified initrd to unpack ramboot/image.tar.gz to a tmpfs ramdisk. From then on, the system runs entirely from ram - uncompressed. This is like running off an extremely fast SSD, but with some important differences:...
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