Arch Linux

Mt.Tam-Luxer

Member

From: San Rafael, CA, U.S.A.

Registered: 2003-07-24

Posts: 32

/etc/fstab and the 'tmpfs' entry not clear

Hello,

Well, I've re-installed NOVA, again, from scratch..............(just-for-fun! ....and learning).

One thing stuck-out at me this time.  I use 'vi' to edit the scripts during install and after rebooting I did another 'vi /etc/fstab', with the very-cool syntax-highlighting, which showed the 'tmpfs' line as highlited RED for 'size=2G', which I took to mean an incorrect entry(!?):

tmpfs                  /tmp      tmpfs     size=2G,nr_inodes=10k  0      0

So, I changed it to:

tmpfs                  /tmp      tmpfs     defaults               0      0

My system has 256MB SDRAM, so please let me know if this will cause any problems and, also, why is it the other way in the first-place.  Pure curiosity and double-checking.

Thanx.

Gyroplast

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2002-09-03

Posts: 166

Website

Re: /etc/fstab and the 'tmpfs' entry not clear

First off, don't worry too much about the syntax highlighting. The vi syntax file obviously isn't aware of the size parameter in an fstab, so it's displayed red, but it definitely does exist. See man mount for information on the possible tmpfs options.

size=nbytes
              Override  default  size of the filesystem.  The size is given in
              bytes, and rounded down to entire pages.  The default is half of
              the memory.

That means that there will be no immediate problems with your tmpfs, but in your case it'll only be 128 MB in size, which may or may not be what you want.

Hey, and along the way we found a useful purpose for large swap partitions!

HTH,
  Dennis

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"That's the problem with good advice. Nobody wants to hear it."
-- Dogbert

Mt.Tam-Luxer

Member

From: San Rafael, CA, U.S.A.

Registered: 2003-07-24

Posts: 32

Re: /etc/fstab and the 'tmpfs' entry not clear

OK.

So, if my linux swap partition is only 500MB, does the tmpfs size=2G know that I've got less or does it matter?  I'm a little confused about the difference between the tmpfs and my swap partition usage.

Thanx.

Jagged

Member

From: Blacksburg, VA

Registered: 2003-07-18

Posts: 153

Re: /etc/fstab and the 'tmpfs' entry not clear

yay i can finally do something with all my swap-space!

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Nkawtg...n!