Frank Peters <frank.pet...@comcast.net> posted 20090707103623.17cd03be.frank.pet...@comcast.net, excerpted below, on Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:36:23 -0400:
> After reading through the thread on this list about the benefits of > mounting PORTAGE_TMPDIR as tmpfs, I decided that I will be doing this > mount from now on. My total RAM is 4G, but since I only "emerge world" > about once per week, I can easily set aside temporarily 2G or more for > this purpose. > > However, after doing some more reading, I find that some people > recommend mounting tmpfs using the option nr_inodes=1M, while others > just accept the default value for nr_inodes. > > To me, setting maximum inodes to 1M seems a bit high. Can emerge > actually generate that many temporary files? Would it be safer and also > avoid swapping to set nr_inodes=1M or is the default good enough?. FWIW, I've never had the slightest issue with the defaults, and that's running up to 7+ emerges at once, the way portage's auto-scheduler is handling it here, and about that handling it myself based on --tree, before that. However, the mount (1) manpage says the default nr_inodes is half the number of physical RAM pages. At a 4k pgsize, that's 1M for 4 gig anyway, and 2M for the 8 gig I'm running, so I /shouldn't/ be running out and should be able to lower it. Personally, I'd just go with the default nr_inodes. People with 2 gig or less of real RAM may need to worry about it, especially if they do a lot of parallel makes (tho with 2 gig I'd crimp on parallel makes way more than I do, too, so may not have to, but as I've said before, I'm not sure of the affect at a gig, someone would have to test and see), but with 4 gig and a million inodes by default, I think you should be fine. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
