So far, so good.
There's been a significant improvement in the desktop's page loading as a result of shifting tmp files to RAM - at least I think the stuff described in my last post achieved this - and by telling Firefox to shift its cache into /tmp - ie, into RAM.
Subjectively, I believe that pages are loading faster. What is certain, so far, is that fewer are failing to load completely - something which drives me batty on sites like the BBC and, of course, this one. Not 100% cured, but much. much better.
As for the EeePC, I've only bricked the poor thing once so far today.
Forums all make editing fstab look so simple, but simply leaving out a space prevents the computer booting. However, I think it's now got noatime built into fstab.
Just in case anyone else ends up in a similar mess after editing fstab, this is what seemed to work for me (Xubuntu 10.04, but the most helpful instructions I found were on a Fedora forum - so probably fairly general.)
The initial symptom was a brief warning about a non-valid something or other (Unrecognised Mount Option? too fast for me to read,) followed by a black screen giving the option to press S to stop mounting, or M for a manual recovery.
Pressing M presents one with a minimal CLI, apparently already running as root. I could get at fstab:
sudo nano /etc/fstab
("nano" seems to be the editor used in the command line interface - I think). Trouble is, whilst it was easy to read fstab, it remained stubbornly read-only.
The solution involved a live flash drive. I'd rather naively thought that running a live session would allow me to get at system files and change them. Goodness, but I was wrong.
Trying three different distros, I was unable to mount the drive concerned (/dev/sda1, as it happens.)
What eventually worked was this - should anyone have the same problems getting into a bricked system.
Run a live CD/flash drive.
Open a terminal - if appropriate (PCLOS, I think), as root.
Then do:
sudo mkdir /mnt/temp The temp could be "temp" or "disk 1" or whatever you like - simply creating a mountpoint for the offending drive. Just use whatever name you used throughout the process.
sudo mount -t ext4 /dev/sda1 /mnt/temp It seems that it needs all this information - the file system type, the drive, the location and name of the mountpoint created in the first step.
sudo nano /mnt/temp/etc/fstab directed the live distro/terminal session, via the mountpoint created in the first step, to the required destination.
(I found I had to use sudo to make it work - that was using a Xubuntu live flash drive.)
fstab now opens, and can be edited. Amazing how fast memory fades - I think that when you finish editing, pressing ctrl-x to exit results in a yes/no query about keeping your changes, actioned by y or n, followed by pressing Enter to retain the changes.
The appropriate part of fstab (an uncommented-out line starting with the affected drive's UUID) was modified from the bit where it mentioned ext4
ext4 noatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
(Flopped the first time when I left the space between ext4 and noatime out - fortunately it now took me a lot less time to fire up a live session and correct this. Experience is wonderful.)
Once it was working, I added a further line, copied unashamedly from the internet, at the end of fstab:
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0
(K.Mandla says that noatime will make nodiratime happen too, and as I believe K.Mandla of the eponymous site to be Awfully Bright, I believe this.)
Following another reboot, and pleasantly surprised when it obediently started, I did the Firefox thing in about:config:
right-click in open space and choose a new string value -
browser.cache.disk.parent_directory and set the value to /tmp.
Seems to be working...
When I'm not actually killing it, I'm most impressed with Xubuntu 10.04. Even with /tmp moved into RAM, its currently using about 160MiB of RAM with Firefox and System Monitor open and idle; the CPU's ambling along at about 10%. That will rise sharply when anything is actually done, of course.
With OpenOffice installed and all updates completed, followed by apt-get clean - an instruction I suspect to be very familiar to EeePC fans - about 2.4GiB of hard drive space has been used. I seem to remember this is about what the default Xandros originally installed on the Eees used.
So - an infuriating evening (should never start a project an hour before bed time), followed by, touch wood, a so-far more relaxed afternoon messing about with Linux.
And two computers with faster- and more completely-loading internet pages to show for it.
What should I break try next, I wonder?
