Improving the perforamance of the ramdisk.

[A Guy]

I am making an assumption that the core.gz file is stored and mounted as a compressed file.
If RAM space wasn't an issue, would it be faster in performance if the core.gz file wasn't in a compressed form?

I seem to remember someone stating that the compression algorithms are not a tremendous impact, but maybe I am wrong.

[core-user]

I don't think you'd notice a great deal between compressed & non compressed running from ram, but you would notice a slight difference if it was on a drive.

[A Guy]

Thanks for the reply.
I didn't think it would help much, and given the time to transfer the file over the net, it looks like compressed is the way to go.

[Jason W]

The dCore*.gz files are an initramfs image that is uncompressed and loaded to RAM during boot.  The image is mounted as / and then /init is run.   Hence why the dCorePlus images take over 1 gig of ram to load and run a ~300MB dCore*.gz image, due to the decompression of the .gz file. 

[xor]

I am making an assumption that the core.gz file is stored and mounted as a compressed file.
If RAM space wasn't an issue, would it be faster in performance if the core.gz file wasn't in a compressed form?

I seem to remember someone stating that the compression algorithms are not a tremendous impact, but maybe I am wrong.

http://wiki.tinycorelinux.net/wiki:remastering_with_ezremaster#options_for_adding_extensions_to_your_remaster

Options for adding extensions to your remaster

ezremaster supports several methods of adding extensions to your remaster, each with their benefits and drawbacks. The 3 methods can be mixed.

“Outside initrd apps on boot” or “Outside initrd apps”: These options will put the extensions in the ISO image under /tce/optional. If you use “Outside initrd apps on boot” the extension will also be listed in /tce/optional/onboot.lst so that the extension is automatically loaded at boot. The “Outside initrd” options are best for systems that have limited memory but you must leave the remaster CD in the drive after booting. There is also an option “Check to optionally set copy2fs.flg if using outside initrd apps”. This option creates the copy2fs.flg which will cause the extensions to be copied to memory at bootup which will require more memory but will allow you to remove the CD after booting.

“Inside initrd apps on boot” or “Inside initrd apps”: These options will but the extensions in the initrd (tinycore.gz) under /opt/tce/optional. If you use “Inside initrd apps on boot” the extension will also be listed in the /opt/tce/optional/onboot.lst so that the extension is automatically loaded at boot. The result is a system that boots entirely from memory and the CD can be removed as soon as Tiny Core starts booting. This is a good method to use if you have enough memory on your system.

“Extract TCZ to in to initrd”: With this method, during the remaster process each extension you selected will be mounted and then copied in to the extracted initrd. The result is a system that loads everything to memory (CD can be removed after system starts booting) and which boots faster than the “inside initrd apps” method. Since the extensions are no longer mounted, compressed TCZ files (squashfs) as they are with the “Inside initrd apps” this method takes slightly more memory but should have better performance. % %