What exactly is tmpfs/tempfs?

[orasis]

What exactly does tmpfs do? - Does it act as a RAM based version of /tmp? - If so does that also mean that if I extract big *run programs, especially games - that everytime I do I need to specify --target /tempdir ?

I suppose if I am doing nothing but office work or watching videos with already pre-compiled/Gslapt packages than tmpfs is a good idea, but if you have 256MB's of RAM (which tmpfs will only use 128mb) it's not so great of an idea seeing as these binary games and stuff use way more tmp space than 128 - and will not 'break' them up unless you want to get a 'signal caught' error

[orasis]

Update --- ET, (wolfenstein) is faster in Vector GNU/Linux than any other Linux I have tried and I have tried plenty of Linux'es... and this may be due to the tmpfs which I have never enabled, or had an option to, enable in the other LInux'es...

But there is a drawback of course.. extracting large files which do not like to be spread out amongst the disk and RAM will give you a signal caught error and exit...

So I suppose using tmpfs has it's benefits and drawbacks...

Anyone else have experiences with the tmpfs, good or bad?

[Vxt]

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[wcs]

I had the same experience as you with these two game demos.
So far as I know, you can turn "tmpfs in RAM" off in VASM --> HARDWARE --> HWSET and then the error shouldn't happen, because /tmp in not mounted in memory (if I'm not mistaken). I didn't try that though, and only specified a different target for uncompressing, as you say.

My approach is to have it on all the time. If something needs a lot more space in /tmp then you need to turn it off or specify a different temporary target.

But I guess, I'm just repeating what you said...