fast mapcalc

[BARNES DAVID]

David Wheatley sez:

<This is rubbish: exactly the kind of half-witted mis-information which gives
<newsgroups a bad name.


Mr Wheatley,
        I know that it is almost "that" black day in the lives of all Brits, bu
t
cheer up. There are a lot of newbees out here who have a lot to learn. 
Learning enough about complex computer systems to do one's work is a real
challenge, usually a pleasant and rewarding one. Please, make the learning
experience positive. 

  **********************************************************
  * My Address                                             *
  *                                                        *
  * DAVE BARNES                                            *
  * Geology Dept.                                          *
  * Western Michigan University                            *
  * Kalamazoo, MI 49008                                    *
  *                                                        *
  * email address                                          *
  *                                                        *
  * barnesd at lab.cc.wmich.edu                               *
  ********************************************************** 


On Mon, 3 Jul 1995, David Wheatley wrote:

> >>Most Unix workstations allow you to define a ram-disk.  If you have enough 
> >>RAM you can copy your location to the ram-disk and then run grass normally.
> >>
> >>Jim Hinthorne              Voice:  509-963-2826
> >
> >Ram-disk? ... Unix?
> >
> >I'm sorry.  I've only been playing on Unix since about 1983, a short
> >timer, and *do not* claim to be a guru, but I  have never heard of
> >such a thing as "ram-disk" mentioned in the same breath as Unix.
> >
> >I know there are a few new things out there, but this one does not
> >make any sense to me.  Unix does a lot of things with available ram
> >and stacks up a lot of disk I/O in memory, but ... .
> >
> >Did we mistype DOS?
> >
> 
> This is rubbish: exactly the kind of half-witted mis-information which gives
> newsgroups a bad name.
> 
> Some (if not all) unices DO in fact allow 'ram-disks' or whatever you want to
> call it. Slakware LINUX, for example, relies on this feature in order to inst
all
> itself. In case any true unix anoraks want to know how to do it, you mount 
> it like any other disk with an entry in /etc/fstab something like this:
> 
> # device        directory       type    options         freq pass
> /dev/ramdisk    /ramdisk        ext2    defaults
> 
> to find out if your flavour of UNIX can do this, check to see if the device
> driver /dev/ramdisk (or something like it) exists. If it does then you can.
> 
> Of course you DO need to be root in order to mount a partition, so this
> might not be the correct solution to the original question ...
> David Wheatley
> Department of Archaeology
> University of Southampton
> Southampton
> SO17 1BJ
> 
>