[unboggling]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

calibre uses only /tmp

On OS X, /tmp is usually a symlink pointing elsewhere.

Thanks. So if I understand correctly how symlinks work, that means I still don't know which temp folders to mount as ramdisks. I've done some testing, trying to adapt the script in the spoiler to mount relevant temp folders each to its own ramdisk at startup. Script is from a blog article (which took it from GitHub):

http://blog.alutam.com/2012/04/01/op.../#time-machine

https://raw.github.com/gist/931579/1...disk_MacOSX.sh

It works but doesn't speed up calibre startup or bulk conversions. Tried various ramdisk sizes. I added a line for another ramdisk for /var/folders which is where calibre conversions seem to happen on OS X. /var/folders actually mounts on ramdisk as /private/var/folders. But that didn't speed up bulk conversions either. So I commented out my extra added line.

Obviously I'm missing or misunderstanding something. I'm new to command line and symlink. Is there a way with command line to figure out exactly which folders the symlink /tmp points to?

Spoiler:

#!/bin/bash

# +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
# |                                                                      |
# |  Set up Mac OS X to store temporary files in RAM rather than on disk.|
# |                                                                      |
# |  By Philipp Klaus <http://blog.philippklaus.de>                      |
# |                                                                      |
# |  Originally by Ricardo Gameiro <http://blogs.nullvision.com/?p=357>  |
# |  Changes by Daniel Jenkins                                           |
# |     <http://blogs.nullvision.com/?p=357#comment-1140>                |
# |                                                                      |
# +----------------------------------------------------------------------+

cd /System/Library/StartupItems
sudo mkdir RamFS
sudo chown -R root:wheel RamFS
sudo chmod -R u+rwX,g+rX,o+rX RamFS
cat << "EOF" | sudo tee RamFS/RamFS > /dev/null
#!/bin/sh
# Create a RAM disk with same perms as mountpoint

RAMDisk() {
    mntpt=$1
    rdsize=$(($2*1024*1024/512))
    echo "Creating RamFS for $mntpt"
    # Create the RAM disk.
    dev=`hdik -drivekey system-image=yes -nomount ram://$rdsize`
    # Successfull creation...
    if [ $? -eq 0 ] ; then
        # Create HFS on the RAM volume.
        newfs_hfs $dev
        # Store permissions from old mount point.
        eval `/usr/bin/stat -s $mntpt`
        # Mount the RAM disk to the target mount point.
        mount -t hfs -o union -o nobrowse $dev $mntpt
        # Restore permissions like they were on old volume.
        chown $st_uid:$st_gid $mntpt
        chmod $st_mode $mntpt
    fi
}

# Test for arguments.
if [ -z $1 ]; then
    echo "Usage: $0 [start|stop|restart] "
    exit 1
fi

# Source the common setup functions for startup scripts
test -r /etc/rc.common || exit 1 
. /etc/rc.common

StartService () {
    ConsoleMessage "Starting RamFS disks..."
    RAMDisk /private/tmp 1024
    RAMDisk /var/run 128
    # RAMDisk /var/folders added by unboggling. 
    # RAMDisk /var/folders 1024
    # RAMDisk /var/db 1024
    # mkdir -m 1777 /var/db/mds
}
StopService () {
    ConsoleMessage "Stopping RamFS disks, nothing will be done here..."
    # diskutil unmount /private/tmp /private/var/run
    # diskutil unmount /private/var/run
}

RestartService () {
    ConsoleMessage "Restarting RamFS disks, nothing will be done here..."
}

RunService "$1"
EOF
sudo chmod u+x,g+x,o+x RamFS/RamFS


cat << EOF | sudo tee RamFS/StartupParameters.plist > /dev/null
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist SYSTEM "file://localhost/System/Library/DTDs/PropertyList.dtd">
<plist version="0.9">
    <dict>
        <key>Description</key>
        <string>RamFS Disks Manager</string>
        <key>OrderPreference</key>
        <string>Early</string>
        <key>Provides</key>
        <array>
                <string>RamFS</string>
        </array>
        <key>Uses</key>
        <array>
                <string>Disks</string>
        </array>
    </dict>
</plist>
EOF