What is "/dev/shm" and do I need it??
 

My Dell PowerEdge 6600 came preloaded with Linux Enterprise AS 2.1. I noticed that I have a file system /dev/shm loaded and preallocated about 1.0Gb of the virual memory. My questions is, do I need this /dev/shm file system? Currently, I've unmounted the file system, but have not removed from the fstab. Does anyone know why we have this file system mounted and have no files/folders in it. Please help!!

Thank you in advance.

Scott

ipc = interprocess communication.
shm = shared memory

i did not know the answer to this, but it looked interesting, so I googled
"linux /dev/shm" which led me to http://linuxfromscratch.org/pipermai...er/039568.html
a bit hairy, but there are probably other hits that explain better

You can "man ipcs", ipcs -m to see which processes are using shared memory,
which, I currently think. is probably not /dev/shm