Question on emulating TinyCore's methodology for a multilib x86_64 Linux build

[daxm]

With RAM being relatively cheap and HDD throughput being such a bottleneck I've loved the ideas behind TinyCore Linux.  (TinyCore Linux's concept that a HDD is to RAM is what a tape drive is to a HDD.)  The idea that the WHOLE OS is running in RAM and that the HDD is just for archiving purposes really rings home with me!

Sadly, I have yet to find a Linux distro that shares TinyCore's ideals while yet allowing for larger than 3GB of RAM.  (i.e. a 64 bit Linux OS that runs purely in RAM and archives to the HDD).  I even read the whole CLFS doc hoping that it would discuss the idea of booting to tmpfs filesystems.

So, to my question.  I'd like to find/build a 64 bit Linux distro to access my additional RAM, to run in RAM, and use the HDD as an archive/backup mechanism.  I've even speculated how the system would boot (load a very small OS off of the HDD, mount a tmpfs, tar -zxvf archived/backup file to tmpfs filesystem, chroot to the tmpfs mounted dir.  Then occasionally archive tmpfs filesystem to protect against loss of power.)  Honestly I have no idea how to do this though.  :-(

Any suggestions on where I could get started?  (The best option being that it already exists, of course.)

The end goal is a "normal" home workstation that runs VMWare Server, GNS3/Dynamips and various typical office type apps (seamonkey, openoffice, VLC client, etc).

Any suggestions/hints/miracles are greatly appreciated.

[^thehatsrule^]

TC places everything into the initrd... could start by seeing how to create one.

[curaga]

You could also just compile a 64-bit kernel for TC (remember to enable 32-bit functionality) and so you can access all the ram. For each app there's still the 4gb border, but this solution might be enough.