Scratch partition...

[Mark Hahn]

> mount -t tmpfs /dev/shm /tmp
> 
> And in theory, the numbers I've seen tend to show that this is a bit
> faster than having /tmp in the vfs cache path. Though I'm not an 
> expert on the topic.

generally, filesystems try to be synchronous with metadata,
that is, directory entries, inodes, etc.  so you'd be avoiding
that traffic by using tmpfs.  file *contents* tend to be lazily
written out by filesystems anyway, so there's probably 
no savings there.  (depends on timing)

> However, I have noticed that on our compile box
> (since gcc tends to toss it's temp .o files in /tmp) it's a bit lighter
> on the drive.

gcc -pipe avoids that traffic...