Author Topic: Is this possible or practical? mount an nfs ram disk as swap (Read 2986 times)

cmisip · « **on:** April 07, 2004, 09:03:54 pm »

Wish the zaurus 5600 had more memory. I know that it is possible to create ram disks in linux. My desktop systems have memory to spare and the zaurus can connect via 802.11b. I dont know if it is possible to nfs export a virtual ram drive though. If it is possible, and a swap device can be created for the zaurus this way, then the I/O should be faster but I dont know it the 802.11b will be a bottleneck. At any rate, it might extend the life of my SD card. Has anybody tried this?

kbranch · « **Reply #1 on:** April 07, 2004, 10:44:15 pm »

Unless I\'m horribly, horribly mistaken, there\'s no way that the storage on the desktop end would be the bottleneck. WiFi is only 10 Mbps, which is about 1.25 MBps. I don\'t know about yours, but my hard drive can transfer at about 8 MBps. Also, in my experience the Zaurus can\'t come close to getting the full speed of WiFi.

mussi · « **Reply #2 on:** April 08, 2004, 05:59:36 pm »

I wouldn\'t try it. For various reasons like timouts, data corruption etc, etc.

Rather repartition your Z, 48 MB RAM and 16 for / works quite nicely.

cmisip · « **Reply #3 on:** April 08, 2004, 11:09:54 pm »

The zaurus 5600 can be repartitioned? Please share how.

ran · « **Reply #4 on:** April 09, 2004, 03:58:24 am »

Quote

I dont know if it is possible to nfs export a virtual ram drive though.

Probably: it has to sit someplace in the filesystem hierarchy on the PC, so it should be possible to export its mount point.

I know at least one Webpal hacker did swapping via NFS over 10BaseT Ethernet. He had to do a kernel patch on the Webpal,, though (iirc). A google search for \"webpal nfs swap\" should turn up a page describing it.

Ran

cmisip · « **Reply #5 on:** April 18, 2004, 12:24:47 am »

Thanks for the tip. I found the webpal howto. and have gotten it to work. So far it seems to be faster than SD card swapfile. I dont know how to benchmark though. I created a 20 meg ramdisk on my linux server, nfs exported it to the zaurus and used it as a swapfile.

I am wondering how high I can push this. Are the memory problems on the Z a thing of the past?

Will keep testing

ScottYelich · « **Reply #6 on:** April 18, 2004, 09:44:10 am »

yes, of course you can do this.
I\'ve run with diskless systems in the past -- but they were all hardwired.
with wifi, I\'d think that you\'d be really asking for trouble -- swap is
important. I\'d recommend to just buy a (largeR) CF. They\'re cheap.

Scott

cmisip · « **Reply #7 on:** April 21, 2004, 09:12:22 pm »

I only need it for Opera which always complains of being out of memory. It seems to be working fine now.

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Author Topic: Is this possible or practical? mount an nfs ram disk as swap (Read 2986 times)