Fun things to do with lots of RAM...

[Finch75]

Hi everybody,

at the moment, RAM is "incredibly cheap" (well, everything it relative, I guess *g*) and I'm seriously thinking about a nice upgrade. Now, the number of RAM slots is limited and 2 GB modules still cost about 3 times as much as 1 GB modules.

I'm willing to spend some money if I can then do "really cool :cool: things" (tm) - but it would be a real waste if it went unused or made the computer just 1% faster. I'm new to Linux, can you help me come up with cool ideas?

These are my ideas now, I don't even know if they are doable (are they?)

1) Load the entire OS (and I'm not talking about DSL here, I'm talking about a FULL (K)Ubuntu incl. stuff like OpenOffice, Amarok and developer stuff like Eclipse) into RAM during/after boot and then have it be incredibly fast. Ideally, I could have the system drive go to sleep? I could use USB as /home and wouldn't need swap anyway...

2) Have a large RAM disk, load a couple of CDs (MP3 / flac) onto the RAM disk and have them play while all hard disks go to sleep... (maybe you see a pattern here? :-))
2a) load a DVD into memory?! that would obviously only work for single layer DVDs, maybe not movies?)
2b) put my (huge) browser profile on a RAM disk

3) Run several Virtual Machines at once (probably VMWare Player, maybe VMWare Server, very unlikely, but maybe: XEN) and have them be "incredibly fast" (tm) (I'm talking about 4 or even 6 GB memory for the 64 bit host, so that allow a large disk cache for the VM and even for the guest?)

In general, I want a "silent PC" that does not make ANY sound while I'm not using it (!) and very little noise while I AM using it... (i have a fanless PSU and a really quiet CPU cooler - the only thing that's really moving is the hard disk)

Can all of the above be achieved with 4 GB of RAM? Or would 6 GB be better? *g* RAM may not be cheaper than it is now for the next year or even longer... (prices are expected to start rising in June or July and then stay "high"(er) at least until the end of the year)

Any input on that and any more "cool" ideas? ;-)

Finch

[a12ctic]

gigabyte I-ram, bassicly a really cheap form of solid state storage.

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Storage/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2180&ProductName=GC-RAMDISK
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2480


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-51784544344753709

thats a video of windows xp being INSTANTLY loaded.

Itll cost you like 300$ to have it loaded with 1gb sticks (and the base) but its well worth it.

[juxtaposed]

*g* RAM may not be cheaper than it is now for the next year or even longer... (prices are expected to start rising in June or July and then stay "high"(er) at least until the end of the year)


Why is that?

Should I buy RAM now then? I was thinking of getting more. I have 512MB right now.

I just don't know if it would really increase my performance that much. I don't play games often, but maybe I should/could...

[mech7]

Because the demand for ram is getting higher (vista) thus the price get's higher :) Altough some question if this is true and not an artificial way to raise the price :D


Why is that?

Should I buy RAM now then? I was thinking of getting more. I have 512MB right now.

I just don't know if it would really increase my performance that much. I don't play games often, but maybe I should/could...

[diatribe]

This arguement is invalid; RAM price won't go up because vista came out.

[a12ctic]

RAM prices have accualy shot down sense vistas release. When i bought my 1gb of crossairvalue ram it costed like 100$ now its like 50$

[PatrickMay16]

I know a guy who made his computer completely silent. The way he dealt with the hard disk was to encase it in a huge wooden box and a layer of foam.

[saulgoode]

RAM prices have accualy shot down sense vistas release. When i bought my 1gb of crossairvalue ram it costed like 100$ now its like 50$
As the original poster suggested, the cost of "low-end" RAM is quite economical. This is likely owing to the fact that expanding to Vista-required levels with 1G sticks on a system with only 2 or 3 memory slots is a problem. I suspect vendors are "dumping" their 512M and 1G sticks before they (supposedly) become obsolete.

Mind, I am by no means complaining (nor am I disagreeing with you, Arctic); this is a great opportunity for Linux users to upgrade their machines in a cost-effective manner. I have been having a blast since I added 1G to my 512M machine, permitting me to virtually run the OLPC's Sugar, AROS (AmigaDos), Minix3, and even Win98 (plus some other OSes). It is also nice not having to switch to Dillo or close down the GIMP when I need to compile a large program.

[Finch75]

ok, people, pleaaaaase don't turn this into a discussion about future RAM prices?! This is a very complex topic and NOBODY "really" knows what's going to happen.
Prices have fallen drastically (up to 70%!) since January and admittedly, an increase / rebound has been predicted several times since March... hasn't happened yet. However, the current prices are below production cost, so they really cannot fall much more. It has little to do with Vist'a launch, it has a lot to do with inflexible supply (building fabs takes a long time), product cycles and inventory...
If you care about details, you can read something here:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2140353,00.asp
and here:
http://www.dramexchange.com/

But please, that's really off topic! (It's my topic, so I decide! *g*)

Juxtaposed: If you were thinking of getting more RAM, now is a good time. 512 MB really is "low end" nowadays and depending on the type of memory you need, you can get 1 GB (brand name, e.g. Corsair or Kingston) for less than 30 USD (link) (http://www.pricewatch.com/memory/pc2-4200_ddr2-533_1gb.htm)!
"Enough RAM" is the single most important factor for a fast system - that does not always mean "more is better". Enough is enough *gg*. How much is enough? Depends on what you are doing. There's one very simple hint: Just watch the amount of memory (! - RAM and virtual/swap) your system is using and add that much RAM (unless you're a poor student *g*). There's really no good reason to use SWAP except for "emergencies"... At the moment, i can't tell you how to see the used memory in Ubuntu (probably "System Monitor") - I'm new to Linux and have Gnome and KDE installed. I don't know which program belongs where ;-) Shouldn't be too hard to find out, though...

@a12tic: Maybe I should've been more precise: "I'm willing to spend some money" means "a hundred, maybe 200" euro/dollars, not 500/600... I-RAM is probably cool, but causes different "issues" altogether and is hard to even buy... (where can you order it?). In the long run (meaning: probably next year), I'd like to get an SSD... right now I'm just trying to decide if I upgrade from 2 to 4 or to 6 GB...

@Patrick: Yes, there are ways to make hard disks "more silent", but this is just working on symptoms you wouldn't have with other solutions. A hard disk will also always generate a certain amount of heat and you will probably need a fan to take care of that...

ok... I'm happy there are so many replies to my question, but so far, not a single one has been on topic...

PLEASE - anybody?! :-)

[23meg]

ok... I'm happy there are so many replies to my question, but so far, not a single one has been on topic...

Here's the first one:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BootToRAM

[juxtaposed]

If you were thinking of getting more RAM, now is a good time.

Ok then :)


512 MB really is "low end" nowadays and depending on the type of memory you need, you can get 1 GB (brand name, e.g. Corsair or Kingston) for less than 30 USD (link)!

That's an amazing price - if I get more RAM, I'd probably get 1GB more. I think I have 4 slots in my computer, though I don't know if Ihave 2 x 256 or 1 x 512.

With the high canadian dollar, that would only be a few dollars more!

But the cheapest I see on futureshop.ca is 100$ (though I didn't look very close).

[saulgoode]

ok... I'm happy there are so many replies to my question, but so far, not a single one has been on topic...

Goodbye.

[Tundro Walker]

I agree, all the talk about RAM prices kinda hijacked the post.

EDIT: YEAH! So I'm gonna re-hijack the post by talking more about the i-RAM! LOL!

The i-RAM thing...wow! I read up about that on several review sights, and it sounds really cool. Only problem is, it's $150 for the PCI board, then you have to supply the RAM for it, which (folks in the sites were quoting $80-$100 for 1gb sticks), can addup to $350-$400 extra. So, you'd spend ~$500-600 for a 4gb hard drive that loads super fast. Their assessment basically showed it hauled major butt for I/O operations, but other operations it was about as fast as a modern hard drive. EG: for file-copying, the thing smoked the pants off the hard drive. But for multi-tasking operations and some application use, it was only a little faster.

But, with more development and some bigger RAM sticks (and lower prices..), it could really be cool. My room mate and I debated about the possible uses. Mine was that you'd toss your OS on it, so boot up and regular OS I/O activity would be smoking fast. Then, you'd use your hard-disk for mp3, DVD, etc storage. Your RAM would still act like normal RAM, but for most activities, it'd simply be your CPU cooperating with the RAM and i-RAM drive to provide silent, fast operations.

His concern was power-failures causing the i-RAM to lose its data (which would force a re-install of the OS onto it...blech). But, it has a built in rechargable batter that prevents such during power failure. Even when your computer is off, as long as the power-switch on the power supply isn't off, the card will draw enough power from the PCI slot to keep the i-RAM memory going. So, we got to thinking that you could install the OS to your i-RAM, make a ghost copy on your hard-disk as back-up, and set the bios to emergency boot off your HD if the i-RAM ever pooped out.

This is really cool, because I was wanting to try a silent-computer like the folks at DSL are offering, but I didn't want to use a FLASH drive for storage (since it eventually degrades over time). You could use the mini-ITX 800mhz motherboard, with a stick of 1gb RAM, and this i-RAM drive + 4gb RAM, and have a completely silent machine. Granted, it'd cost about the same as a regular computer...but...

[Delirious]

I-ram is cool and if you have the money to BURN get it.

I wouldnt get one just because hybrid hdd and real solid state drives are not to far off and have already started showing up in some retail laptops.

But like anything new they will be expensive.

[smoker]

Here's the first one:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BootToRAM

excellent link, thanks,

i use puppy linux occasionally, and it loads completely into ram, and runs superfast, the entire distro is approx 80MB max.

[SoulinEther]

No offense to VIA (I find their amazing shrinking motherboard project to be awesome) but a VIA CPU is from what I hear really crappy and slow.

If you want a fanless CPU, just underclock a good Pentium or AMD Athlon XP. Take it from 3.0 ghz down to like 2-2.4 ghz and you can run it probably with no fan at all.

That boot to ram looks cool. Could make a nice combo.

plus... you can get a compact flash to IDE connector and have a totally silent hard drive. Install Ubuntu on it, have it read to ram... and then write the differences to the compact flash card when you shut down.

[regomodo]

I know a guy who made his computer completely silent. The way he dealt with the hard disk was to encase it in a huge wooden box and a layer of foam.

mmmm. toasty!

[aimran]

/start hijack

Imagine the i-ram, a fanless underclocked cpu, a silent HDD for storage, AND Linux MCE (assuming it's still around) - you'd have THE PERFECT media center! Fast, silent and FUN!

/end hijack

Keeping on-topic, the prospect of i-ram sounds promising. Some questions however:

a. If you change the mount points of /home and all other directories where you need to save changes made to the HDD could you keep the changes in the event of a power outage?

b. Are there any articles out there on how to do this with ubuntu? Guides?

Thanks in advance!

[Finch75]

Here's the first one:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BootToRAM

Yes, indeeeeeed, it is! Thank you so much. The first on-topic post and I missed it. Oh this is so tragic *lol*
I really don't know how it happened 'cause I must've read it or I wouldn't have received a notification about today's post... oh well... good thing we're not in a hurry ;-)

This "BootToRAM" looks pretty much exactly like what I was looking for. Well, not quite, but it's a very good starting point. I need a way of turning a complete system into an image rather than "modifying a LiveCD".

Can anybody tell me if a LiveCD is "conceptually different" from a normal system? Or is it just the "bootstrapping process"? I'm under the impression (which might be wrong) that they start with a LiveCD image to save the time of installing the system (and the extra hard disk / partitions of course)


Remember, the possibilities are endless! Enjoy, and share any cool things you do with this HOWTO!

After reading the article, my idea would be this:
milestone 1:
- find a way of transforming my existing system into a "BootToRAM" system similar to tutorial, mount /home on hard disk

milestone 2:
- have an automated (!) way of doing that
-> this way, I could boot into my "normal system", do any changes I want, then start a script to have this change available in my next "bootToRAM" reboot

milestone 3:
- like M2, but the other way around
- if I understood this correctly, all changes to the system are written to the ramdisk, right? So I could put an icon on the desktop to "persist changes" which would basically write the ramdisk contents back to the hard disk and also recreate the compressed ramdisk image for the next boot
- this would be kind of similar to a VM where I can choose "discard changes" / persist changes when I power off... would be cool, wouldn't it?

milestone 4:
- have a similar "silent shadow" facility for my /home directory. I'll have to think about that one. I guess it would be nice to mount some kind of flash storage as /home, but save the contents to the hard disk during shutdown. This way I'd always have a "safe backup" in case there's any problem with the flash... (I guess SSDs are pretty reliable, but I'm not sure about USB sticks or SD cards)

Speaking of SSD: I was really waiting impatiently for SSD prices to come down. 8 GB is no fun and 16 GB currently cost ~300 Euro. If I could get the above to work, I probably wouldn't need SSD any more :-) Or how would it compare? I think "BootToRAM" would have a slightly longer startup time (because it reads the entire system into RAM, even unused parts) but would be blazingly fast after that. Much MUCH faster than IRAM, btw.

Speaking of I-RAM: I don't find it very appealing. Yeah, sure I'd keep it if somebody gave it to me, but it's not worth the price. It's incredibly expensive AND has limited capacity. I need to buy lots of RAM that is not useable as RAM. Considering it's RAM, it is slow at 150 MB/s. Then I probably wouldn't stop worrying about data loss (although it's supposedly safe with its battery).

The "BootToRAM" looks great and I really hope I can get it to work - maybe I'll post some really cool things to the Wiki in the distant future :-)

Yes, that's right. I'm afraid this "project" will take a long time because I'm a Linux newbie. Yeah, being a software developer, I have some potential ... but there's just so many things to know... especially about dependencies (not between packages, but between files needed by the kernel/the boot process) and possibly permissions... might even take 'til winter ;-)

Now two more off-topic things:
1) Yes, I did upgrade to 6 GB ;-) I admit that I don't know exactly what to do with it yet (other than give a lot of memory to my VMWare), I just wanted to expand my options and this post about BootToRAM makes me glad I did. Also, I did buy at a good price and it hasn't gone down any further in the last 4 weeks. Actually, the price increased by a few dollars since I bought it. Not much, we'll see how this continues. I generally try not to be upset by price changes after I buy things, but I don't always succeed in extreme cases :-)
2) VIA CPU? Well, might be nice for a pure MediaPC, but I wouldn't want it for daily use on my main PC. Actually, I'm rather waiting for the 45 W Athlon dual cores (will appear in July and cost less than 100 dollars!) and I might be able to get almost passive cooling for them. I currently have a 65 W version. If I disconnect the fan, everything is completely harmless until I run Prime95 ;-). Yes, even watching DivX is still no problem with the temperature. However, 100% load for a longer time does get "dangerous", so I'd probably need something temperature controlled...

Glad this thread has come back to life and is even partially on topic :-)
Can I change the thread title? Sorry for complaining about the off-topic posts - anything about RAM / flash / SSD / silent PC / I-RAM is interesting, just speculating about RAM prices and the reason for RAM prices is pretty useless imho and 9 out of 10 off topic posts at the beginning can really kill a thread...

Greetz,

Finch

[SoulinEther]

2) VIA CPU? Well, might be nice for a pure MediaPC, but I wouldn't want it for daily use on my main PC. Actually, I'm rather waiting for the 45 W Athlon dual cores (will appear in July and cost less than 100 dollars!) and I might be able to get almost passive cooling for them. I currently have a 65 W version. If I disconnect the fan, everything is completely harmless until I run Prime95 ;-). Yes, even watching DivX is still no problem with the temperature. However, 100% load for a longer time does get "dangerous", so I'd probably need something temperature controlled...

If your AMD cores ran at a lower clock rate or whatever, they could be capped from reach true "100%" and thus never overheat.

I hate to turn to Apple, but the Apple TV uses a 1 ghz Pentium M processor underclocked to 350mhz so as to avoid necessary cooling.

[Finch75]

/start hijack

Imagine the i-ram, a fanless underclocked cpu, a silent HDD for storage, AND Linux MCE (assuming it's still around) - you'd have THE PERFECT media center! Fast, silent and FUN!

/end hijack

Yes indeed. Have you used LinuxMCE yet? I took a look a few weeks back and decided to give it some more time. Something like "only 30% of users reported installation problems" does not quite sound like a 1.1 version...


Keeping on-topic, the prospect of i-ram sounds promising.

Strictly speaking, that is not on-topic. Do you know what I-RAM is?
It is a *special* piece of hardware (http://www.gamepc.com/images/labs/rev-iram-cardtopLG.jpg) that pretends to be a S-ATA hard disk but really uses memory modules to store its data. It does *NOT* use system RAM for that, you need to buy extra dedicated modules. It's a PCI card and uses "standby power" to keep the data when the PC is turned off (but still connected to the power cable). It also has a battery that will keep the contents for several hours when the computer has no power at all.

You say it sounds promising and I don't agree. It WAS promising two years ago (when it was announced) but was/is too expensive for the mainstream or even the enthusiast market. Since i-Ram was announced, flash memory has progressed much faster than RAM. I don't think it can compete with the SSDs which are now entering the market with quite some momentum. It is just as silent, but uses much more power than SSD. It is somewhat faster but quite limited in capacity (afaik, not more than 4 GB in the first version... maybe 8 which would then be incredibly expensive as 4 x 2 GB DDR1)



Some questions however:
a. If you change the mount points of /home and all other directories where you need to save changes made to the HDD could you keep the changes in the event of a power outage?
b. Are there any articles out there on how to do this with ubuntu? Guides?
Thanks in advance!

I think this is answered by my remarks above? I-RAM "looks" and "behaves" just like a hard disk and it is even connected with a hard disk cable! (look at the picture, upper right corner) That's why transfer speeds are limited to 150 MB/s. A S-ATA 2 version with twice the speed was announced but I'm not sure if it has been released or will ever be available. It seems like even the first version is hardly available anywhere...

IMHO (!), i-Ram is interesting only from a technical point of view and for some rare and very special requirements where money doesn't matter. Just my 2 cents :-)

[Finch75]

If your AMD cores ran at a lower clock rate or whatever, they could be capped from reach true "100%" and thus never overheat.

I hate to turn to Apple, but the Apple TV uses a 1 ghz Pentium M processor underclocked to 350mhz so as to avoid necessary cooling.

well, I don't think I'd like to work with 350 MHz :-)

Actually, a big big cooler is fine as long as it doesn't need a fan.

Do you know of any solution to throttle the CPU in software? Two solutions would be interesting for me:
1) AFAIK, most AMD CPUs have three speeds - mine runs at 800 MHz, 1800 MHz and 2000 MHz (per core). As always, the power consumption/heat production rises a lot at the top. It could probably run at 1800 MHz for a long time if we could keep it from running at 2000 MHz.

2) A bit more sophisticated: When the CPU reaches a certain temperature, throttle it to let it cool down. It really took several minutes under Prime95 (and with passive cooling!) to reach critical temperatures.
Actually, this would be the perfect solution - much better than temperature controlled fan controllers (which cost extra money and don't really do what I want!) and still full power for the occasional peaks.

Any ideas?

[SoulinEther]

I've been looking into it myself. The kernel has some coolnquiet stuff in it...

Honestly, I've never overclocked or underclocked... in windows, linux, or on the hardware. (Ok, well, I'm overclocking my cpu from 1749 mhz to 1751, but nobody is counting, hehe)

As far as I know, GNOME has a panel apple thing about cpu frequency scaling. Is that it?

[latsoc]

@ finch75

how is the process from your plans to use your system completely from ram?
i'm looking exactly for the same then you described in your post...

there are the linux-live.scripts, with them you can convert your existing system to a live cd :-)

thx and have a nice day
costal

[insane_alien]

loading entirely into RAM definitely speeds up your system. its amazing how fast it becomes.

also, if you load ubuntu onto a large flash drive you can have a solid state machine. very quiet. just underclock and undervolt your CPU so the fan doesn't come on as often.

[Lostincyberspace]

or go water cooling, excuse me liquid cooling.

[Linuxratty]

Why is that?

Should I buy RAM now then? I was thinking of getting more. I have 512MB right now.

I just don't know if it would really increase my performance that much. I don't play games often, but maybe I should/could...

It's always good to have some extra ram on hand...it's really cheap...I got two gigs for less than $50.00 at New Egg.

[aaaantoine]

One thing I do with RAM when bored.

Step 1: Add a system monitor to the gnome-panel.
Step 2: Add a RAM usage monitor to this applet.
Step 3: Create the following program, named memleak.cpp:


// A simple demonstration of memory leaks

#include <iostream>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
char * leaker;
int size = 1000000;
int leaks = 200;
bool leaking = false;
std::string argv_string;

for (int i = 1; i < argc; i++)
{
argv_string = argv[i];
if(argv_string == "--leak")
{
leaking = true;
std::cout << "Purposely creating a memory leak. ";
}
}

if (leaking) std::cout << "This program should effectively waste " << size * leaks << " bytes of data." << std::endl;
else std::cout << "This program will cycle " << leaks << " times, generating " << size << " bytes of data each time, without leaking." << std::endl << "To create a leak, run " << argv[0] << " --leak and watch your memory usage meter jump up a notch." << std::endl;
leaker = new char[size];
for(int i = 0; i < size; i++)
leaker[i] = 'a';

for(int j = 0; j < leaks; j++)
{
if(!leaking) delete leaker;
leaker = new char[size];
for(int i = 0; i < size; i++)
leaker[i] = 'a';
}
std::cout << "Observe the memory usage. Press any key to quit.";
std::cin.ignore();

delete leaker;

return 0;
}

Step 4: Compile. (requires build-essentials)


g++ memleak.cpp -o memleak

Step 5: Run ./memleak --leak
Step 6: Watch as a huge chunk of your available RAM goes bye bye.
Step 7: Press any key.
Step 8: Watch that chunk of RAM come back. Er, hopefully. ;)

Disclaimer: This code is provided as-is with no warranty. I take no responsibility for any adverse effects created by the program above. DO NOT COMPILE/INSTALL ANY UNTRUSTED PROGRAMS AS ROOT!

[jeffus_il]

Eat it instead of chocolate,
It is low sugar,
And low fat.

[ssam]

install preload

it learns what apps you use, and which files they use, and tries to keep them cached in RAM. it is a very easy way to speed up application loading. it does not need any configuration.

[inversekinetix]

install the OS into i-RAM, it has onboard power and shows up as a regular HD in bios

[Xbehave]

2) A bit more sophisticated: When the CPU reaches a certain temperature, throttle it to let it cool down. It really took several minutes under Prime95 (and with passive cooling!) to reach critical temperatures.
Actually, this would be the perfect solution - much better than temperature controlled fan controllers (which cost extra money and don't really do what I want!) and still full power for the occasional peaks.

Any ideas?
install a sensors program (i think its called ls-sensors but comes with fronteneds like ksensors or gnome equivalent)
install cpu scaling software (im not sure how to throttle CPU useage but you described scaling anyway)
setup a temperature threshold that runs a command to switch the cpu policy between dynamic and powersave, when the temperature gets too high/low.

this wont do exactly what you wanted as dynamic will use the top frequency when needed, but to manually controll the speed youd need to use userspace freq control, which while not that hard is above what ive learnt.

[Finch75]

Hi everybody,

*haha*, it's funny to see this thread come back to "real life" after a little more than 6 months of silence :-)

However, the topic isn't dead for me either so let's give you a little update...

Following my post #19 (http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=2942867&postcount=19), I did spend some time with BootToRAM (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BootToRAM) and I was thrilled about "how easy" it was to take the boot process apart... I spend some time reading the "boot scripts" and just loved the fact that I could do that... BIG reason to continue my Linux experiments...

However, BootToRAM is about "LiveCD" environments and they are quite different from what I ultimately want - most of all, they assume they're running from read-only media (and they do) so there are many things you just can't do with them... (add users, change some permissions and so on). Also, UnionFS (probably??) isn't the right FS for the job.

So I started looking further and became frustrated with ram disks... I had not expected a problem finding a dynamic and compressed ramdisk, but I was wrong... I did not find a ramdisk that grows dynamically (any ideas anyone???!) - that's a pity and an inconvenience, but not really a major problem I guess. I'd just have to reserve 100 MB or so which I could increase if I want to install big packages into my "stable image"...
Bigger problem: I didn't find a compressed filesystem that is still writeable. Windows does a nice job with NTFS, I didn't find anything similar for Linux :-( Maybe I'll need UnionFS after all...

Still, I continued on my quest but soon realized that I would need more Linux knowledge to finish it. Yes, I'm a software developer and understand many things, but I'm still a Linux newbie and cannot write shell scripts without thinking about it and quite some trial and error... I would definitely need more knowldge about filesystems and mounting/unmounting/remounting, chroot environments and other things...
So basically this is where I put the project "on hold" because I thought the time would be better spent solving 10 other problems...

Btw, I did "finish" (!) my "CPU throttling task" from post #22 (http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=2943021&postcount=22). It was half a year ago, so I don't remember exactly..., but IIRC I did use cpufreqd and lm-sensors. With little tweaking of the config file, I could make it behave *exactly* as I had wanted it to, i.e. "allow full dynamic CPU frequency if the CPU temperature is below x degrees, throttle to lowest frequency if temperature is above y degrees and go back to (allowed) full speed if temperature has dropped... I was not so hard, but I did have to overcome some bugs in the cpufreqd setup... :-(

<off_topic>
Then came the "real summer" (i.e. nice weather) and I consciously decided to spend much (!) less time with my computer and much (!) more time outside :-) :-)
This lasted 'til September, but I had many very important things to do after that and honestly, I haven't touched Linux since... until last week! So the revival of this thread is funny timing, actually. In the last couple of days, I have actually solved all the "major problems"... I use my computer for so many things that the "migration to Linux" is a major task (it's my development machine, my (phone) answering machine and my personal video recorder, my media station (music) plus I use it to transfer data from my heart rate monitor/cycling computer, my cell phone, my fitness bike and for "remote controlling" my AV receiver (which actually has a web and a telnet interface!)). Not everything works in Linux, but I think I can make everything else work in VMWare...

I will spend some more time tweaking the system now and trying to get to know it better "from inside".
I will probably continue my "Boot to RAM" adventure... Actually, I had bought myself a SSD as a Christmas present, but it was "DOA" (dead on arrival) and I returned it for a refund instead of a replacement because a much better version will be released in a couple of months... So the SSD is postponed and I'm still interested in running from RAM (which is great anyway, but much less important with a SSD - I care more about noise and heat than about speed...)
</off_topic>

My next adventures into the "Boot to RAM" will most probably happen in a virtual machine, though... Playing with the real system is dangerous and definitely annoying - lots of reboots are required and you can't do anything but wait during that time... If anybody is interested in the topic, let me know and we can experiment together ;-)

ok, that was my "little update":biggrin:

now on to the new posts:
@insane_alien: Yes, that's what I hope. Have you done it before? How? (and I mean a "full" system, not a DSL or other type of "rescue disk")

@aaaantoine: Wow, you must be *really* bored, I'm impressed *g* :twisted:

@ssam: Any links? What does it do? How does it work?

@Xbehave: Yes, thanks. See above. If you're interested in this, the sensors program is called lm-sensors (http://www.lm-sensors.org/). Setting a threshold that runs a command is not so easy (the command should only run once, right?), but actually, you don't have to. cpufreqd (http://cpufreqd.sourceforge.net/index.shtml) does everything you need, you only need a couple of lines of configuration! See the example (http://cpufreqd.sourceforge.net/examples/cpufreqd.conf) on the cpufreqd site... I can probably also post my configuration if I can still find it... (I started with a fresh 7.10 install last week)

@latsoc/costal: The linux-live.scripts look interesting, I'll have to investigate if they do what I want... Have you started any experiments yet?

[locovaca]

What about this:

1. Get a gob of ram (6 gigs) in your system- you'll need the amd64 distribution
2. Create a 5 gig partition on your hard drive and a 5 gig ramdisk
3. Set up a RAID-1 array between the disk partition and the ram disk

I don't know how it'd work for performance, but the idea would be that the data would be stored simultaneously on your hard drive and in ram (due to the raid). Every time you booted up the kernel raid drivers would think that your ramdisk was missing data, would do a sync in the background between the HD and the ramdisk until it was built up. At that point, I'm not sure if it'd just read from the ram disk or the hard drive, but it seems like a trivially easy way to ensure that your data was saved from boot to boot AND a way to get the contents restored automatically.

[jinx099]

What about this:

1. Get a gob of ram (6 gigs) in your system- you'll need the amd64 distribution
2. Create a 5 gig partition on your hard drive and a 5 gig ramdisk
3. Set up a RAID-1 array between the disk partition and the ram disk

I don't know how it'd work for performance, but the idea would be that the data would be stored simultaneously on your hard drive and in ram (due to the raid). Every time you booted up the kernel raid drivers would think that your ramdisk was missing data, would do a sync in the background between the HD and the ramdisk until it was built up. At that point, I'm not sure if it'd just read from the ram disk or the hard drive, but it seems like a trivially easy way to ensure that your data was saved from boot to boot AND a way to get the contents restored automatically.

That's a really cool idea, I might have to try that someday. In theory, reading from RAID-1 will essentially only read from the fastest disk, this case being the RAM. I'm not 100% sure that linux software RAID does it this way, but I think it does.

[jpittack]

I would love to join you guys on this adventure. Please keep in mind that I am on a laptop. I am trying to keep off my hard drive, as my last attempt to gain more battery power. Hardy will give me a new round of battery saving abilities. I have tried the alpha, but currently I still have this mysterious extra timer interrput. Check out the hardy section for my post on that if you have any ideas.

I am trying to the Boot to RAM idea. Currently I am trying to finish it up with adding the grub items. I can't find the proper file location for the kernel line and the next line. Here is a snipit of my menu.lst file.

root (hd0,9)
kernel /john/home/ubuntu-7.10-desktop-amd64/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper splash
initrd /john/home/ubuntu-7.10-desktop-amd64/casper/initrd.gz


I need to find out if root (hd0,9) is the correct location. I know I have my /home partition on sda10. I have the hd0 because I recalled from the past that that is how my hard drive is named, despite being a sata. In Vista it gave me something about ide compatibility.

How do I find out the correct location for this all?

And please offer ideas about battery power savings you might already know. I already have laptop mode, LCD, and scaling working.

[kernelCompile]

RAM prices have accualy shot down sense vistas release. When i bought my 1gb of crossairvalue ram it costed like 100$ now its like 50$

I certainly don't know enough to have an informed of opinion of where RAM prices will go, but as I recall, RAM prices actually went down after some previous releases of new Windows versions, because RAM manufacturers over-estimated the demand and over-produced. Given that theres quite a bit of resistance to Vista, it seems possible that this could happen again.

[Depressed Man]

Well DDR1 prices have shot up (no longer being produced...which is great (sarcastically) for me..since I need 1 more GB of RAM to bring my desktop up to 2 GBs). DDR2 is the the thing now (though I think DDR3 is coming or is already out?).

[jpittack]

DDR3 is out, and its pricey. Currently only supported by intel cpu platforms. For a while there wasn't a performance increase, but now it is becoming more visible, but its still requires tweaking of the system to have the RAM run like it is supposed to. I have some laptop RAM, 2x1GB, that won't run at full performance because dell doesn't allow for it. As stated earlier, I'm a battery fanatic at the moment, so it doesn't bother me. Price was a little over $100, coming straight from crucial. Now it sells for less then $100.

Next fall should be the next time we see a price drop that we could cash in on, and if not then, this time next year. Reasons for my predictions are just having the drr3 amped up to some higher speeds. Once AMD can have ddr3, that would probably raise the price, as demand would go up. People who will only support then underdog, or those that want the cheaper platform (usually) will be moving up.

[mips]

Well DDR1 prices have shot up (no longer being produced...which is great (sarcastically) for me..since I need 1 more GB of RAM to bring my desktop up to 2 GBs). DDR2 is the the thing now (though I think DDR3 is coming or is already out?).

Weird as I purchased 2x1GB sticks of DDR the other day for the same price as DDR2.

[markp1989]

i have installed icebuntu on my desktop, the install size is 700mb, i want to know how copy the root partition to ram on startup (i have 2gb ram), so then programs etc will be able to load alot faster, i no it is posible, i just dont know how to do it

[EnergySamus]

I'd say that 1GB is good enough... Unless you are planning on playing Doom or Quake (if you have Windows: Call of Duty 4). Get 2GB if you are doing things like this.

I am thinking about upgrading to 1.5 GB of ram (from 1GB)

EnergySamus

[bruce89]

Tiles@Home (http://tah.openstreetmap.org/).

[andrewabc]

Tiles@Home (http://tah.openstreetmap.org/).

Can you explain what that has to do with large amounts of ram?
(nice link btw, never knew of openstreet)