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I've head that installing TexLive on a ramdisk (i.e. tmpfs for Linux) could make it run faster, especially for LuaTeX. I want to try it and see as I have 16GB of memory, just in case, and I'll report the results back here when I do as I don't think anyone else has tried this before! It'll settle conclusively whether it actually can make a difference or not for those of us who have access to such memory.

Can someone please help me in installing TexLive on a RAMdisk / tmpfs? How would installing it on here work? I know how to install it normally but not on RAMdisk/tmpfs, I have no idea how that would even start!

airatin
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  • Welcome to TeX.SX! You can have a look at our starter guide to familiarize yourself further with our format. You aren't bothered about having to reinstall any time you need to reboot? – cfr Jan 09 '15 at 03:17
  • Good point @cfr! I'm thinking of syncing the installation so that I can just drag it to that mounted tmpfs/ramdisk folder, maybe using a tool like anything-sync-daemon? Or is it not that simple? – airatin Jan 09 '15 at 03:29
  • I don't know. You'd have to try it. I guess you just install it there, set up the sync and see. I don't see why there should be anything special about installing to RAM disk - its just a disk as far as the system is concerned. Just set a custom install path and think a bit about where you prefer to mount it. – cfr Jan 09 '15 at 03:38
  • Would I not just mount the directory that's being installed as tmpfs? Also I don't know how to set a custom install path; apart from using sudo apt-get install and using Software Centre I don't know how to properly install programs esp. something large and complicated like Tex :( – airatin Jan 09 '15 at 03:41
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    I wouldn't suggest it with Software Center, only with upstream TeX Live (since that will install into a single directory tree). Here's a basic outline of the steps I'd take. – Mike Renfro Jan 09 '15 at 05:05
  • Also, installing upstream TeX Live and replacing Debian-packaged TeX Live. – Mike Renfro Jan 09 '15 at 05:08
  • Hi @MikeRenfro, actually I'm the same user as airatin (the user who asked that question you linked to), I just lost the login info for that account so here I am :( Your comment was quite helpful but how do you make a symbolic link? Or is that just typing in the texlive.ram file in /etc/fstab as in tmpfs /usr/local/texlive.ram tmpfs nodev,nosuid,noatime,mode=1777 0 0? And is that all it links to? I remember on my old Linux I had texmf files in /bin and /usr/share too... Or was that just a mistake in installing (probable haha) and it really IS all supposed to be in one directory? – airatin Jan 09 '15 at 13:27
  • Symbolic link. Using it means you don't have to mount and unmount every time you want to switch from disk to RAM. Software Center didn't install wrong, it just uses the Debian rules on where particular types of files should go. Installing into a single tree in /usr/local is also a valid choice for upstream software. – Mike Renfro Jan 09 '15 at 13:36
  • Thanks for the help @MikeRenfro! Finally installed it in the OS, I'll test it out on RAM tonight and let people here know how it goes :) – airatin Jan 10 '15 at 18:38
  • Make sure to take the average of several comparable runs on the disk test. I think you'll find later runs will be considerably faster due to caching, and comparable to the RAM disk speeds. – Mike Renfro Jan 10 '15 at 18:59

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