{"id":319901,"date":"2014-04-30T19:46:06","date_gmt":"2014-04-30T17:46:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-rocket.me\/blog\/?p=136"},"modified":"2023-08-29T12:20:05","modified_gmt":"2023-08-29T10:20:05","slug":"mount-folder-ram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp-rocket.me\/blog\/mount-folder-ram\/","title":{"rendered":"How to mount a folder directly into the RAM?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note : This tricks is only suitable for dedicated servers<\/p>

A static cache system like WP Rocket stores all the website pages as HTML files.<\/p>

Without a cache system, when a visitor access a webpage, WordPress loads first. Then, WordPress queries the database to find out which themes and plugins are to load. Finally, it loads the contents of the current page (with database requests).<\/p>

Sometimes, this mechanism can be very long. SQL language (for communication with the database) is often a bottleneck.<\/p>

A cache system saves each page directly in the server (HTML files). Thus when a visitor requests a page, the stored file will be directly displayed without any database requests.<\/p>

The HTML files are stored on the server, displaying the web page will be dependent on the hard drive reading speed (and writing for saving pages).<\/p>

The best solution is to use SSD for excellent performance compared to HDD.<\/p>

Problem ? SSD are more expensive, and still less common than mechanical drives.<\/p>

To take advantage of good performance if you are using a HDD a good solution is to mount the cache folder directly in your RAM. You can save several precious milliseconds with this solution.<\/p>

It is a common practice we use for files of low importance. Indeed if you restart the server all the data in the RAM is flushed due to the lack of persistence<\/strong>.<\/p>

The cache files are automatically regenerated, so it\u2019s doesn\u2019t really matter if you loose it.<\/p>

How do we do this?<\/h2>

We will simply create a tmpfs volume<\/strong> and mount it.<\/p>

Tmpfs is a filesystem which was originally scheduled to store temporary files (tmp) as the same suggest.
Be careful, the following commands require SSH access and root privileges.<\/p>

Here is the command:<\/p>

\n\t
mount -t tmpfs -o size=1G tmpfs \/mywebsite\/wp-content\/cache\/wp-rocket<\/code><\/pre> 
 <\/div> <\/div><\/div>
Mount to create a montage point<\/p>
  • -t to specify filetype<\/li>\n\n
  • -o to specify options including size you want to allocate.<\/li><\/ul>
    You should customize the size options depending how much free ram you have.<\/p>
    Be careful, don\u2019t forget to specify the full path of your cache folder. For instance \/var\/www\/mywebsite<\/p>
    The cache folder will be mounted temporary, and won\u2019t be mounted at the next reboot.
    To mount automatically, simply edit the fstab file (\/etc\/fstab) and add :<\/p>
    \n\t
     
    tmpfs \/mywebsite\/wp-content\/cache\/wp-rocket tmpfs defaults,size=1G 0 0<\/code><\/pre> 
     <\/div> <\/div><\/div>
    <\/div>\n\t