Tiny Core Linux
Tiny Core Base => TCB Q&A Forum => Topic started by: BananaBro69 on October 21, 2026, 11:55:46 AM
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This is something that’s bothered me with the Ramdisk. if i make a partition 8 GB, Because of the Ramdisk i can only use 3-4 GB. the Ramdisk should only be there for computers with old hdds that chug along with 10-30 MB/s, and my hdd is faster than ~80-90 MB/s. So there isn’t a meaning to a Ramdisk. can i turn it off? Or am i stuck with 4 GB unless i do some things in the source, or if i just bring my ram to 8 GB? Please let me know. :-\
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Hi BananaBro69
It sounds like your complaint is you can't access more than 3 to 4 GB of RAM, right?
That's because you are running a 32 bit operating system.
32 bits can't address more than 4 GB, and part of that 4 GB of address
space is used for other hardware on your motherboard.
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Hi BananaBro69
It sounds like your complaint is you can't access more than 3 to 4 GB of RAM, right?
That's because you are running a 32 bit operating system.
32 bits can't address more than 4 GB, and part of that 4 GB of address
space is used for other hardware on your motherboard.
i know a 32-bit system can only use 4 GB of ram. But i only have 4 GB of RAM on my laptop. meaning even if i used the 64-bit version, i will still say “4 GB”. meaning i can’t use an 8 GB hdd partition, because of said ramdisk. So is there a way to turn off the Ramdisk? So i can use it just like any other non-Ramdisk linux distros?
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Are you speaking of zram?
If so, you can turn it off with nozswap
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Here's what I see by default on a machine with 16gb ram:
dmesg | grep zram
zram: Added device: zram0
zram0: detected capacity change from 0 to 8019376
Adding 4009684k swap on /dev/zram0. Priority:-2 extents:1 across:4009684k SS
free
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 16306832 141108 16086048 27652 79676 15945436
Swap: 4009684 0 4009684
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Hi BananaBro69
... But i only have 4 GB of RAM on my laptop. meaning even if i used the 64-bit version, i will still say “4 GB”. meaning i can’t use an 8 GB hdd partition, because of said ramdisk. ...
I'm afraid I still don't understand your issue. The amount of RAM present
should not have anything to do with hdd partition sizes.
Please post the commands you are executing and their results.
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This is something that’s bothered me with the Ramdisk. if i make a partition 8 GB, Because of the Ramdisk i can only use 3-4 GB. the Ramdisk should only be there for computers with old hdds that chug along with 10-30 MB/s, and my hdd is faster than ~80-90 MB/s. So there isn’t a meaning to a Ramdisk. can i turn it off? Or am i stuck with 4 GB unless i do some things in the source, or if i just bring my ram to 8 GB? Please let me know. :-\
I've been following this thread and I'm a little confused. I don't feel like "Ramdisk" and "partition" belong in the same discussion?
If I understand it correctly, the RAMdisk that Tiny Core uses for the root directory is dynamic and can grow or shrink depending upon what's stored there. If the RM disk is taking up unduly much space then there are a few things to consider: Since .tcz extensions are (by default) mounted-and-symlinked, rather than copied, into /usr, with their actual contents remaining on disk, they take up very little RAM. I think the thing most likely to be taking up space on the RAMdisk is a cluttered up home directory - I run into this myself and I have to discipline myself to not let that happen.
Whatever partitions you have on your HDD are not affected by what's going on in the RAMdisk.
While there are other reasons besides raw speed for using the RAMdisk, it's worth noting that the RAMdisk is far and away faster than -any- HDD and is at least a little faster than an SSD (though my experience with SSDs is limited because, with Tiny Core, I don't really need one).
@ Rich & BananaBro69 - please correct me if I've botched this explanation or completely misunderstood the issue.
If it helps any, I just fired up my little HP Stream 11 with 4 GB of RAM (running Tiny Core 17.1beta1 / x86_64) and checked the memory usage with sudo cache-clear ; free and here's what I found:
On a base norestore boot:
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 3.8Gi 97.5Mi 3.6Gi 26.5Mi 28.6Mi 3.5Gi
After filetool.sh -r : total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 3.8Gi 137.8Mi 3.3Gi 223.1Mi 322.4Mi 3.2Gi
After reboot to full gui: total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 3.8Gi 224.3Mi 3.2Gi 247.4Mi 321.3Mi 3.1Gi
In all cases, the hdd (it's really an emmc device, nominally 32 GB) looks the same:$ fdisk -l /dev/mmcblk0
Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 29.12 GiB, 31268536320 bytes, 61071360 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 1463770E-B131-46BB-9558-6A1F5099D908
Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/mmcblk0p1 2048 58722303 58720256 28G Linux filesystem
/dev/mmcblk0p2 58722304 61071326 2349023 1.1G EFI System
~$ df -h /mnt/mmcblk0p1
Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mmcblk0p1 27.4G 6.9G 19.0G 27% /mnt/mmcblk0p1
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Hi Leee
I think the issue here is the problem has not been accurately described.
That' why I asked the OP:
... Please post the commands you are executing and their results.