Preloads applications using ram

hlegius · 2007-12-29 15:16:01

Hello there!

Recently I bought 4GB of ram for my notebook. My idea is preloading some applications like a kde, firefox, qt and gtk libs and binaries for a better performance.

I tried to copy files from hd to ram using tmpfs and creating symbolic links from HD locations to ram location, but I think that has not improved anything

I installed the preload from AUR, but it seems that not effect too...

Any ideas ?

p.s: sorry for my bad english.

freakcode · 2007-12-31 02:16:07

You can try 'readahead', I guess it does what you want, but only while cold booting your notebook.

lilsirecho · 2007-12-31 02:38:12

Perhaps a cachedir of your desired packages placed in flash drive can be preloaded into ram.

The cachedir in flash could be loaded from pacman as follows;

..... pacman --cachedir /media/disk/cache -Sw (package name(s)......
Then the install of such packages is done as follows;

........pacman -Udf (paste package(s))...................

This produces a reasonably fast install.

I leave the ram part of the problem to your liking......

hlegius · 2007-12-31 02:59:58

@freakcode
The preload script does a readahead, but isn't effective how I expected. I tried to use a "prelink" scripts. It's worked well, but now, it's crashes while prelinking libs/binaries

I'm using a XFS filesystem now! I'm already searching more performance

@lilsirecho
hmm... I'll try this! If I got something new, I replay here

A 64bits O.S can boost performance, right ?

Thanks guys!

lilsirecho · 2007-12-31 06:17:35

I ran a test of a full KDE download into cachedir .

Then used

pacman -Udf /media/disk/Cache/*.pkg.tar.gz

to install the entire 225MB of KDE.

It took 95 seconds to install.

byte · 2007-12-31 07:52:30

lilsirecho: He's not talking about package installation, but application startup.

xdeusx · 2007-12-31 09:48:57

you could also try preload
its in aur...
runs on my system, even though i am not sure if it improved anything...

hlegius · 2007-12-31 10:38:29

@xdeusx

Yeap! I'm using it, but I think it not improved anything in my system...

See the /var/log/preload.log file:

[Mon Dec 31 08:27:28 2007] 2923285kb available for preloading, using 43380kb of it
[Mon Dec 31 08:27:28 2007] readaheading 313 files

I'm giving ~2.9GB of ram for it, but it uses only ~43MB as ram cache

And here, my free -m output

[root@Selene hlegius]# free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3537 839 2697 0 0 573
-/+ buffers/cache: 265 3272
Swap: 0 0 0

Yes! I'm using the Arch i686 I'll install the x86_64 today for wins more 500MB of ram which I'm losing with the i686

skottish · 2008-01-01 07:18:43

hlegius wrote:

My idea is preloading some applications like a kde, firefox, qt and gtk libs and binaries for a better performance.

It seems to me if QT (3 and/or 4) and GTK2 were loaded into memory at boot, that almost everything else that you're asking about would fall into place. Maybe there's a good way to do this?

hlegius · 2008-01-01 13:53:18

skottish wrote:

It seems to me if QT (3 and/or 4) and GTK2 were loaded into memory at boot, that almost everything else that you're asking about would fall into place. Maybe there's a good way to do this?

Are you suggest to load on ram only qt3 and gtk2 libraries and binaries ?

Finally, preload app gets more ram

[Tue Jan 1 11:50:06 2008] 3541229kb available for preloading, using 207172kb of it
[Tue Jan 1 11:50:06 2008] readaheading 291 files

Now, I'm using Arch64 with Reiserfs and JFS as filesystem and performance boosts a little

skottish · 2008-01-01 14:39:42

hlegius wrote:

Are you suggest to load on ram only qt3 and gtk2 libraries and binaries ?

It's something I was thinking about anyway. I'm not sure how to do such a thing though. I do know that starting QT and GTK for the first time is the only place where I still have bottlenecks on my system. Although, it's really not a big deal to me.

Mr Green · 2008-01-01 16:42:37

A good test might to try out Faunos and run it from Ram

Been reading about software raid but it went waaay over my head

Arch Linux

#1 2007-12-29 15:16:01

Preloads applications using ram

#2 2007-12-31 02:16:07

Re: Preloads applications using ram

#3 2007-12-31 02:38:12

Re: Preloads applications using ram

#4 2007-12-31 02:59:58

Re: Preloads applications using ram

#5 2007-12-31 06:17:35

Re: Preloads applications using ram

#6 2007-12-31 07:52:30

Re: Preloads applications using ram

#7 2007-12-31 09:48:57

Re: Preloads applications using ram

#8 2007-12-31 10:38:29

Re: Preloads applications using ram

#9 2008-01-01 07:18:43

Re: Preloads applications using ram

#10 2008-01-01 13:53:18

Re: Preloads applications using ram

#11 2008-01-01 14:39:42

Re: Preloads applications using ram

#12 2008-01-01 16:42:37

Re: Preloads applications using ram

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