I just made a quick check on my DEC Alpha running OSF/1 3.0. It apparently
supports a memory file system as well. I've never used it, but now my
curiousity is piqued - I'll give this a shot and see if I can do faster
process sequences.
The SunOS equivalent of this is 'tmpfs'. However, I'm warned by a fellow I
know who programs UNIX kernels for a living, that it's terribly buggy, and
will probably crash. Various SunOS updates, i.e. 4.1.1 and 4.1.2 (read
Solaris 1.1 and 1.2) have apparently fixed these bugs, but enough remain
to cause problems. The OSF/1 implimentation of the memory file system is
much more solid.
from the man page...
NAME
tmpfs - memory based filesystem
CONFIG
options TMPFS
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/mount.h>
mount ("tmpfs", dir, M_NEWTYPE|flags, args);
DESCRIPTION
tmpfs is a memory based filesystem which uses kernel
resources relating to the VM system and page cache as a
filesystem. Once mounted, a tmpfs filesystem provides stan-
dard file operations and semantics. tmpfs is so named
because files and directories are not preserved across
reboot or unmounts, all files residing on a tmpfs filesystem
that is unmounted will be lost.
blah, blah, blah...
/////\\\\\/////\\\\\////
Kevin Seel
Golder Associates Ltd.
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
seel@theos.com