Arch Linux

dxxvi

Member

Registered: 2011-07-23

Posts: 122

Why does mplayer write to disk when playing a file in memory?

Hi All, I downloaded a youtube file, saved it in /dev/shm (i.e. RAM) and played it with mplayer. While mplayer was playing it, iotop reported a lot of actual disk write. I'm pretty sure that was mplayer because there was no other major applicatiion running at that time. Why does mplayer need to write to disk while playing a file in RAM? And how to prevent that?

Regards.

ayekat

Member

Registered: 2011-01-17

Posts: 1,590

Re: Why does mplayer write to disk when playing a file in memory?

I downloaded a youtube file, saved it in /dev/shm (i.e. RAM) and played it with mplayer.

How large is your video file? How much memory did you assign to the tmpfs when you mounted it?

Otherwise, try `lsof` to see what files mplayer opens for write (usually in the fourth column, with an `w` or `u` suffix).

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pkgs │ hacks │ cfg │ blag

mhoogland

Member

From: Amsterdam

Registered: 2015-08-09

Posts: 11

Re: Why does mplayer write to disk when playing a file in memory?

Find out where mplayer writes and remove access to it, and than see what happens.