On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 03:54:30PM +0200, Dustin Kirkland wrote:
> > As a data point, I used to have my /tmp on tmpfs while I still had a
> > spinning disk, in order to address the power usage issues of disk flushing.
> > I found it to be a least-bad option which led to serious degradation of
> > desktop interactivity in the face of even moderate memory usage (at the
> > time, with 4GB RAM), and not because of excessive /tmp usage.
> > And as others in this thread have noted, this same problem can occur in
> > cloud instances.
> Definitely. /tmp on tmpfs saves energy when you have a spinning HDD,
> and extends the life of your SSD by reducing the number of NAND flash
> writes!
Sorry, I seem to have not made my point clear. I said this was a *least
bad* option when running on an HDD. I ditched it soon after switching to an
SSD, because it had a horrible impact on desktop interactivity. It might
extend the life of the SSD, but it was certainly shortening mine.
The correct fix for writing to /tmp causing excessive flushes to disk is to
*fix the thing that's causing flushing to disk*. Trying to dodge by moving
/tmp into tmpfs just shuffles the problem around.
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
