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Save your disk, write files directly into RAM with /dev/shm

(hiandrewquinn.github.io)
66 points hiAndrewQuinn | 1 comments | 26 Jun 25 23:04 UTC | HN request time: 0.204s | source
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Waterluvian ◴[27 Jun 25 00:10 UTC] No.44392689[source]▶
An assumption I’ve been revisiting is if I really do need to be writing to disk all the time. I can’t remember the last time I actually had a crash or other event where I would have abruptly lost my work.

I’m wondering if I can completely hide away the detail where I can work exclusively in memory (even when I habitually save my code) and “reconcile” as some task I do before shutdown.

In fact, that doesn’t even feel necessary… I git push my day’s work a number of times. None of that needs a local disk. And 64GB of memory was surprisingly affordable.

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1. roryirvine ◴[27 Jun 25 18:07 UTC] No.44398922[source]▶
Have a look at libeatmydata - https://github.com/stewartsmith/libeatmydata

Things will still get written to disk eventually, it's just that fsync() returns instantly without actually doing anything. It's sometimes used in CI and similarly-ephemeral systems, and can produce a noticeable reduction in i/o.

Be warned, though, that it has that name for a reason!