Subject: Re: MFS vs TMPFS
To: Marcin Jessa <lists@yazzy.org>
From: Perry E. Metzger <perry@piermont.com>
List: current-users
Date: 10/04/2005 10:42:49
Marcin Jessa <lists@yazzy.org> writes:
> What would be the advantages of using tmpfs over mfs as memory file
> system? 

Others have mentioned part of this, but let me mention something
others have not: if you sometimes need a big /tmp but mostly you
don't, tmpfs can win because it can allocate and free memory
easily. mfs cannot -- it is one fixed size (though it is pageable.)

The other thing folks haven't mentioned: in theory at least (I don't
know if this is broken at the moment), mmaps of tmpfs don't allocate
new pages. That can be a big win in an embedded context.

Perry