Messages in this thread |  | | Subject | Re: Linux kernel 2.2.17 appears not support >512M RAM Disk | Date | Sun, 24 Sep 2000 14:34:25 -0500 | From | Ryan Tokarek <> |
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>Ryan Tokarek writes: >> On Linux kernel 2.2.17 running on an intel PIII system with 1GB RAM I >> cannot successfully create a ramdisk of greater than 512MB. > >It may be that there is a bug, but I would be interested to know what >you are really trying to do. Usually bugs like this exist because >nobody ever tries such things due to reason of sanity... It may be >you are trying to do something which can better be done another way.
Thanks for your reply.
The reason for this is to store a CD image to be burnt simultaneously to multiple burners. The burners may not all be of the same speed (though currently are... 12x), and the number of them may increase. The simplest way to work around any potential for blazing fast coaster production (we figured) was to store the image in a RAM disk. This way we are not at the mercy of Linux disk caching (which may well be perfectly adequate for this purpose) nor does every instance of cdrecord have to have obnoxiously large buffers.
This is just one application, and the relevant one to us, but I'm sure there are others (that are equally uncommon/unusual/useless? :).
Using a ramfs on a 2.4 kernel appears the way to go. This method works fine for our application and is more efficient than having one large chunk of memory allocated all the time whether used or not (not that we're particularly picky about efficiency with a Gig o' RAM machine). As I understand how the ramfs is used in 2.4, it grows/shrinks dynamically as needed.
Ryan Tokarek Unix SysAdmin Wolfram Research (not speaking for my employer) - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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