ZRAM enabling and settings question from a newbie (SuperZaxxon Beta 5)

[capella]

I'm using the SD Installer PND to set up a bootable SD card.


I didn't opt in for the swap partition, and hope that it will setup the ZRAM for me by default.


But it did not.


Is there anyway to setup the ZRAM with the parameters like what the NAND is using for the bootable SD card?


The SD card has a FAT16 BOOT partition and a EXT3 ROOT partition as created by the SD Installer PND.


Thanks, any help would be appreciated!


P.S.: I'm using SuperZaxxon Beta 5 for both NAND and the SD card.

 

[spiralofhope]

From what I can tell, zRam is a way to make better use of a swapfile. So you'd just set up a swapfile in the usual manner.


I found this tool which helped me set up and activate a swapfile where I wanted.


http://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=swaptools-0.1-slaeshjag

 

[Binky]

zRam is a way to make better use of a swapfile

incorrect


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZRam

 

[spiralofhope]

Hmm, the article is worded pretty badly then.

It increases performance by avoiding paging on disk and instead uses a compressed block device in RAM in which paging takes place until it is necessary to use the swap space on the hard disk drive.

Seems to depend on swap space.. =/


At any rate, from my experience I needed to set up a swap file to get Firefox to run at an acceptable speed. If zRam was installed by default on the latest beta then I shouldn't have needed to do this.


I'll eventually bump into some better knowledge on this and write it up in the wiki somewhere. It's pretty important. Currently working on other stuff though.

 

[mcobit]

It doesn't depend on swapspace on the hdd.


It makes its own swap by compressing rampages in a part of the ram that is reserved for it. For a small performancehit, you get virtually more ram.


With this more ram, there is more ram to fill until it is full and WOULD need to swap to disk.

 

[WizardStan]

zram is just a swap partition on a compressed ram disk with the highest priority. You could do the same thing by creating a 60MB compressed swapfile in /tmp but it wouldn't be as clean.

 

[dimag0g]

zram is just a swap partition on a compressed ram disk with the highest priority. You could do the same thing by creating a 60MB compressed swapfile in /tmp but it wouldn't be as clean.

Are you implying that tmpfs is compressed like zram? Otherwize you'll just get 60 MB of swap minus filesystem overhead, while giving away the same 60 MB of ram.

 

[WizardStan]

Are you implying that whatever is mounted on /tmp is compressed like zram?

No, I specifically said using a compressed swapfile.

 

[dimag0g]

Sorry WizardStan, my mistake.

By the way, I plan to include an option to configure startup script in my app called PNDconfig. This would allow selecting what you want to enable at startup: USB host, TV out, and among others, Zram swap. Expected release date is October 15th.