Does your df look like mine?

[Priam]

Re: Does your df look like mine?

There are still a few "features" that infuriate me like the cursor moving to the end of Firefox's search window for no reason at all,...

This also happens in Konqueror. I'm running both, Feisty and Gutsy, with Gutsy now being the main OS I boot into. I have no idea why the cursor wants to jump to the end of the search window. I've noticed, that if you have the cursor positioned where you want it, and you type at a specific, steady rate, the cursor wont jump to the end. It shouldn't jump at all, I agree, but it's a minor annoyance, so I don't worry about it.

So this happens in Feisty too and it's never been fixed? I find it very annoying 'cause sometimes, with long searches, it doesn't move to the end ot the search but, more probably, as you say, at the end of the search window. You start typing in the middle of a word and the result is garbage, you must reedit your search. It's rather bothersome.

I hope there aren't too many bugs of this kind.

About this tmpfs stuff: it uses half of my memory, Is this an efficient way to use memory when you only have 256 MB?

[Fintan]

Re: Does your df look like mine?

I am not sure what you mean. That was from an installed mepis 7.0 beta (Debian etch).

[integr8e]

Re: Does your df look like mine?

I have no idea why the cursor wants to jump to the end of the search window.

Hmmm, I'm not experiencing that bug; maybe y'all should file a bug report

[Beren Camlost]

Re: Does your df look like mine?

About this tmpfs stuff: it uses half of my memory, Is this an efficient way to use memory when you only have 256 MB?

How exactly did you come to the conclusion that it uses half your memory? (Since it doesn't).

For exactly what reason do you not feel comfortable with the existance of temporary filesystems (and their uses) ?

[Priam]

Re: Does your df look like mine?

About this tmpfs stuff: it uses half of my memory, Is this an efficient way to use memory when you only have 256 MB?

How exactly did you come to the conclusion that it uses half your memory?

I didn't. df does.

df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2 4,2G 2,7G 1,3G 69% /
varrun 125M 140K [25M 1% /var/run
varlock 125M 0 125M 0% /var/lock
udev 125M 52K 125M 1% /dev
devshm 125M 0 125M 0% /dev/shm
lrm 125M 34M 92M 28% /lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/volatile
/dev/hda3 3,4G 153M 3,1G 5% /home

I have 256 MB of memory. Of course, this is what is available for temporary filesystems. And I supposed this is reserved memory. Just as I can't automatically move free space from/dev/hda2 to /dev/hda3, I supposed that you can't move memory used by temporary filesystems to "standard" memory.

If you can provide information to the countrary, please do, state your sources. I'll be glad to read. If you want to go on with your "Since it doesn't" diktats, this will be my last answer.

[Snowhog]

Re: Does your df look like mine?

I think you are mis-understanding what df is reporting. It is not showing how much RAM is being used by the tmpfs. All the reported information is related to the amount of space in the reported partition - on the HD - that is used vs available. Each of these tmpfs exist under the root directory. The OS has created [read:set aside] 125M for each, as reported in your df output. Again, this isn't representing usage of your RAM.

[integr8e]

Re: Does your df look like mine?

According to IBM's website, tmpfs can use both RAM and SWAP, thus, if your SWAP partition is large enough, you shouldn't have much of an issue with Kubuntu using too much of your RAM for temporary filesystems.

[Snowhog]

Re: Does your df look like mine?

Again, man df:

df - report file system disk space usage

Disk space usage is not the same as RAM usage.

[integr8e]

Re: Does your df look like mine?

Do you think it's reporting how much of the SWAP partition is being used for temporary storage?

[Snowhog]

Re: Does your df look like mine?

Perform a simple test. Reboot with a LiveCD. Create a directory under tmp to mount your HD, mount it and then CD into it and look for these tmpfs directories. You won't find them.

[Snowhog]

Re: Does your df look like mine?

Do you think it's reporting how much of the SWAP partition is being used for temporary storage?

No. If that were the case, you wouldn't find these directories on your root partition. Take a look and see.

[Priam]

Re: Does your df look like mine?

I think you are mis-understanding what df is reporting. It is not showing how much RAM is being used by the tmpfs. All the reported information is related to the amount of space in the reported partition - on the HD - that is used vs available. Each of these tmpfs exist under the root directory. The OS has created [read:set aside] 125M for each, as reported in your df output. Again, this isn't representing usage of your RAM.

I believed it was memory used as a filesystem but, apparently, this would be more like a ram disk. Here's what Daniel Robbins (Gentoo founder, and a very good writer) says about it:

First, we'll take a look at tmpfs, also known as the virtual memory (VM) filesystem. Tmpfs is probably the best RAM disk-like system available for Linux right now, and is a new feature of kernel 2.4.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-fs3.html

Notice that he writes RAM disk-like. I'll have to take a closer look but I don't have time to read the whole article tonight. It will be for tomorrow.

[Snowhog]

Re: Does your df look like mine?

and is a new feature of kernel 2.4.

The 2.4 kernel is 'old' but the quote refers to tmpfs as a 'new feature.' We are running 2.6 kernels with Gutsy. Also, 'virtual memory' is created from disk space, not available RAM.

[integr8e]

Re: Does your df look like mine?

No. If that were the case, you wouldn't find these directories on your root partition. Take a look and see.

That makes since; does Kubuntu actually create "temporary" /root directories, then? (that's what I was thinking until I read the above article)

[Snowhog]

Re: Does your df look like mine?

does Kubuntu actually create "temporary" /root directories, then?

Yes. Open a console and cd into /var/run and do a ls -l
You'll see that everything in the directory has today's date/time stamp on it.