Hi,

I have a dual xeon with 4Gigs of RAM
i was wondering if it is possible to completely
load linux into the RAM [ just say read the Hard disk once while loading and
then writes at regular intervals ] to get some more
out of the machine..
any idea on how do i go about achieving this.. ?



regards

You may be able to load it into RAM after boot, but you couldn't boot from that since RAM loses it's memory while the computer is turned off

It doesnt really matter ..
if i loose all the contents.. its a server ... so would nt be using it other than mysql DB else it doesnt matter if i loose contents when i switch off the machine..
i
i mean all i need is that once it is loading it should say perform a read operation from the HDD
and then when i say shutdown [ which would only happen incase of emergency , presuming its a server not meant to
be switched off.. ] it should write of the MYSQL DB [ which is the only thing it will be used for !
and shut down
and then again boot up like before..
need to check performance of this kinda system..


This machine also has a redundant power supply so
i would not worry about a sundden unplanned power loss..
regards

I wonder if you could learn something from LiveCD's like KNOPPIX.

I guess you would create a huge ramdisk and mount this as root filesystem.

Thanks for the advice .. pal

But knoppix docs
Currently it seems to be offline..
for some wiki upgrade..
any other tips..?

Systems using initrd images are using the image to load a RAM disk i.e. the kernel to boot the system. Is this what you are referring to?

Yes.. I would like to have a huge RAMdisk of the root file system [ Containing only
essential packages ..No X Windows for sure .. ] and the RAM disk should not get unmounted...
I wanna try this using Redhat / Fedora ..
any help / ideas .. ?

This how Knoppix works. Perhaps you should look at making your own version.