Run from ramdisk - offtopic

[Klonan]

is there a way to move factorio to ramdisk?

Why?

[Honktown]

Ramdisk might sound like a good idea, until you watch factorio during start/saving and find 100% cpu usage. Disk isn't the bottleneck unless you're on some slow 5400 RPM disk. Also the system shutting down and losing everything.

It could be the protection they have against symlinks and stuff is catching you (they added that so in theory, someone couldn't hijack where files are coming/going, which upset the people redirecting script output).

Suggestion: don't lol

[Laramy65]

Could you try non steam version? If you bought factorio on steam you should still be able to download it from factorio.com

Also why would you do this?

[billbo99]

Within the config.ini there is a new option added since 0.18 (this is an experimental option) that will help with start up times when using lots of mods.

Code: Select all

 cache-prototype-data=true

The second time you start your game after using this flag your startup time should reduce quite a bit. I went from 80 seconds to 16.

If I also enabled the atlas cache option I got startup time reduced to 6 seconds.

[movax20h]

I run Factorio from ramdisk. It works just fine. Not for speed or anything, I simply do. I doubt it have any effect on loading speed at all, and is not the reason I am using ramdisk.

[ptx0]

factorio writes to disk an awful lot during runtime, you can see this by monitoring something like `atop` on Linux, the WRDSK column shows 2.3GiB of writes after about 2 hours of uptime.

i don't see why to ask why they want to run on ramdisk, instead, you can help by answering the actual question or admit you know nothing and bow out.

[movax20h]

factorio writes to disk an awful lot during runtime, you can see this by monitoring something like `atop` on Linux, the WRDSK column shows 2.3GiB of writes after about 2 hours of uptime.

i don't see why to ask why they want to run on ramdisk, instead, you can help by answering the actual question or admit you know nothing and bow out.

The game will write the save to file system cache. If you have enough memory it will simply have it in memory anyway. From the user perspective there will be zero difference if you run the game and save directory on ramdisk or not.

2.3GiB over 2 hours is probably accumulated stat. In 2 hours you will have probably 10 autosaves for example.

If you want to run of ramdisk, you can. Factorio doesn't care.

[ptx0]

you run on Linux, where ramdisk works differently from Windows, where this user reported bug originated. read the original post, dude.

[movax20h]

you run on Linux, where ramdisk works differently from Windows, where this user reported bug originated. read the original post, dude.

The problem he is having, has nothing to do with the ramdisk itself.

[Rseding91]

factorio writes to disk an awful lot during runtime, you can see this by monitoring something like `atop` on Linux, the WRDSK column shows 2.3GiB of writes after about 2 hours of uptime.

i don't see why to ask why they want to run on ramdisk, instead, you can help by answering the actual question or admit you know nothing and bow out.

We write to the log file when something is logged (not frequent) and to the save file when the game saves.

Other than that, we don't touch the disk for writing runtime. So, your statement is false

[planetmaker]

factorio writes to disk an awful lot during runtime, you can see this by monitoring something like `atop` on Linux, the WRDSK column shows 2.3GiB of writes after about 2 hours of uptime.

i don't see why to ask why they want to run on ramdisk, instead, you can help by answering the actual question or admit you know nothing and bow out.

We write to the log file when something is logged (not frequent) and to the save file when the game saves.

Other than that, we don't touch the disk for writing runtime. So, your statement is false

2 GiB (or 250MByte) in two hours is not really that much, if you have autosave every 5 minutes. Thus I think both statements can be reconciled easily.

[ptx0]

Other than that, we don't touch the disk for writing runtime. So, your statement is false

uhm, how does that mean my statement is false? you just described where all the IO is coming from.

[ptx0]

2 GiB (or 250MByte) in two hours is not really that much, if you have autosave every 5 minutes. Thus I think both statements can be reconciled easily.

some servers run from SD card mirror built into the motherboard, if you were to write this much data to them constantly over the course of a year, it would fail early. someone else's definition of "that much" might be very different from yours.

[Rseding91]

Other than that, we don't touch the disk for writing runtime. So, your statement is false

uhm, how does that mean my statement is false? you just described where all the IO is coming from.

factorio writes to disk an awful lot during runtime

That statement is false: 100% false.

"All the IO" is 100% expected and the minimal amount that can be done to save the game. Nothing about any of this is unusual or excessive. The game literally can not write less and still do what you've asked of it.

[movax20h]

Other than that, we don't touch the disk for writing runtime. So, your statement is false

uhm, how does that mean my statement is false? you just described where all the IO is coming from.

factorio writes to disk an awful lot during runtime

That statement is false: 100% false.

"All the IO" is 100% expected and the minimal amount that can be done to save the game. Nothing about any of this is unusual or excessive. The game literally can not write less and still do what you've asked of it.

I think what ptx wanted to say, is that for certain low end hardware / storage, 2G per hour is not the best for the longevity of the hardware (cheap sd cards).

Options to fix: 1) increase the autosave interval, 2) run on ramdisk, and possibly sync the ramdisk to permanent storage (or to networked share) periodically.

But obviously I agree it is not "awful lot". Which is misleading, as it is writing as little as possible. And "awful" here is extremal subjective.

One way or another, it is not a concern for factorio or factorio devs, and user can set it up anyway they want to solve it themselves. Factorio can't fix it, because it already doing the right thing.

[ptx0]

okay, sure. it is all relative. to someone with an AMD R9 3990x, requiring 8 cores is "not a lot". by "awful lot", I really meant, "an awful lot more than nothing". and you can read between the lines or you can say it's 100% false, in which case, reading comprehension is lacking.

[posila]

okay, sure. it is all relative. to someone with an AMD R9 3990x, requiring 8 cores is "not a lot". by "awful lot", I really meant, "an awful lot more than nothing". and you can read between the lines or you can say it's 100% false, in which case, reading comprehension is lacking.

Hello. You seem like you want to be helpful. If that is so, please consider asking the OP to provide useful information that will allow reproducing the issue, like postin the Factorio log, and explain the steps in more detail. For example statements like "Created a ramdisk", "Applied the article" are very vague. There is more than one way how to create a ramdisk, and I know what are the instructions in the article, but I don't know what the OP actually did (and if they say they followed it to the letter, I won't believe them). While for issues that seem to be important to fix (e.g. normally installed game doesn't run or crashes) I, one of the other devs, or one of the mods will ask the person to provide more information if missing in the initial post. But if an issue caused by obscure use case doesn't contain all the info, I'll just skip over it. Trying to explain why the use case is not so obscure, by making it to be a solution to a hypothetical, even more obscure use case is not helping to solve the problem.

[ptx0]

the problem.

ruh oh raggy, we got in trouble.

the problem was microsoft windows all along, and in all of your words you didn't address their issue once.

[Camylarde]

... but I don't know what the OP actually did (and if they say they followed it to the letter, I won't believe them).

OUCH!

[Camylarde]

is there a way to move factorio to ramdisk?

Why?

A) Well, vgot lot of ram and wanted to see if there is startup improvement over my SSD.
B) Because we (hopefully) can?