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Ramroot – Run Arch Linux Entirely from RAM (2017)

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Re: Ramroot – Run Arch Linux Entirely from RAM (2017)

#21

Post by imtringued »

wil421 wrote: post #18

I believe FreeNAS does something like this during startup. You can “install” it on mirrored USB drives in case you run out of power. The redundant USBs are used to install the OS back into RAM. An extra USB in case of corruption and they’re way cheaper than SSDs. I’m assuming you still need to write config files back to the USB. FreeNAS prefers ZFS so it’s RAM hungry anyway. The article recommend 500mb more than you…

SSDs cost 26€ for 128GB and offer significantly more performance and reliability. USB drives are not significantly cheaper.

Re: Ramroot – Run Arch Linux Entirely from RAM (2017)

#22

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

grosswait wrote: post #16
swiley wrote: post #5

A lot of modern laptops come with 32 GB of ram on the lower end. With something like syncthing you only need permanent storage as a cache.

Time traveler from the future brags about lower end laptops!

And I'll bet his system still takes 3 whole seconds to launch a word processor.

Re: Ramroot – Run Arch Linux Entirely from RAM (2017)

#23

Post by cwt137 »

puppetmaster wrote: post #17

Many OS out there take advantage of RAM Disks. Alpine Linux for instance allows you to boot your root device on ram as a default. SmartOS runs a boot image completely on RAM, and keeps your storage free for a few configs and VMS. Virtually all network booted computers run their OSs from RAM. If you have never pxe booted a machine, it is a beautiful experience once you overcome a few challenges: easy upgrades and roll…

PXE boot FTW! I use to work on a project that used LTSP to make a couple dozen thin clients. The thin clients were slow, but the OS was fast. This isn't entirely the OS in RAM as a big chunk of the file system was mounted over the network, but most of the OS was in RAM.

Re: Ramroot – Run Arch Linux Entirely from RAM (2017)

#24

Post by pjmlp »

grosswait wrote: post #16
swiley wrote: post #5

A lot of modern laptops come with 32 GB of ram on the lower end. With something like syncthing you only need permanent storage as a cache.

Time traveler from the future brags about lower end laptops!

And me still having an 8GB one.

Re: Ramroot – Run Arch Linux Entirely from RAM (2017)

#26

Post by agumonkey »

puppetmaster wrote: post #17

Many OS out there take advantage of RAM Disks. Alpine Linux for instance allows you to boot your root device on ram as a default. SmartOS runs a boot image completely on RAM, and keeps your storage free for a few configs and VMS. Virtually all network booted computers run their OSs from RAM. If you have never pxe booted a machine, it is a beautiful experience once you overcome a few challenges: easy upgrades and roll…

Never having finished Home pxe setup is a great sadness of mine.

Re: Ramroot – Run Arch Linux Entirely from RAM (2017)

#27

Post by wil421 »

imtringued wrote: post #21
wil421 wrote: post #18

I believe FreeNAS does something like this during startup. You can “install” it on mirrored USB drives in case you run out of power. The redundant USBs are used to install the OS back into RAM. An extra USB in case of corruption and they’re way cheaper than SSDs. I’m assuming you still need to write config files back to the USB. FreeNAS prefers ZFS so it’s RAM hungry anyway. The article recommend 500mb more than you…

SSDs cost 26€ for 128GB and offer significantly more performance and reliability. USB drives are not significantly cheaper.

Why do I need 128GB when 8GB will do fine? I have so many USB drives I wouldn’t even have to buy one. Microcenter gave me a free 32GB USB 3.0 flash drive last time I went.

Amazon has $4.99 16GB USB 2.0 flash drives from SanDisk. I’m sure you could find cheaper chinese brands.

The FreeNAS community recommends 5+ year old server hardware running refurbished or used enterprise SAS drives. Performance is not an issue when you never want to shut it down.

Re: Ramroot – Run Arch Linux Entirely from RAM (2017)

#28

Post by jolmg »

cjbprime wrote: post #19

I wonder whether this achieves anything performance-wise that just cat'ing every file to /dev/null to warm up the buffer cache wouldn't achieve. In theory, the kernel uses a buffer cache that will hold on to disk pages until they're invalidated by writes. It'll evict the cache if there's memory pressure. But this setup will presumably just crash if there's memory pressure, so that doesn't seem like a win for the RAM…

More than any performance boost that could be achieved from this, I think what's cooler is the ability to unplug the storage device that held the OS.

For example, if you want to run hardware diagnostics on multiple machines at the same time with 1 consistent, custom environment, you can just setup one USB stick with this, and plug it on each machine in turn to boot them up. You wouldn't need to keep the USB stick plugged in while they're running.

Re: Ramroot – Run Arch Linux Entirely from RAM (2017)

#29

Post by mikepurvis »

lallysingh wrote: post #8
mikepurvis wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most live distros do this— rather than have an initramfs that finds and mounts the removable media, they just put everything in the initramfs itself. What's new here is being able to optionally and seamlessly copy the regular disk install into RAM on boot.

What do you mean by "flip to an existing install?"

Have updated my comment to be more clear.

Re: Ramroot – Run Arch Linux Entirely from RAM (2017)

#30

Post by dekhn »

puppetmaster wrote: post #17

Many OS out there take advantage of RAM Disks. Alpine Linux for instance allows you to boot your root device on ram as a default. SmartOS runs a boot image completely on RAM, and keeps your storage free for a few configs and VMS. Virtually all network booted computers run their OSs from RAM. If you have never pxe booted a machine, it is a beautiful experience once you overcome a few challenges: easy upgrades and roll…

i ran a cluster of 6 nodes in 2001 with (before PXE) network book and NFS root. it was awesome.
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