RAMFS(4)

💾 RAMFS(4) — like, the memory file system era 💅

okay so bestie, welcome to the Kernel Interfaces Manual section 4, where we keep all the little system-y bits ✨ this one's about ramfs and it's genuinely such a vibe, stay with me 🫶

🌸 NAME 🌸

ramfs — memory file system, no cap 💖

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

ramfs [ -i ] [ -S service ]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So ramfs literally starts up a 9P file server that keeps, like, all of its files in memory 🧠✨. And when it first boots up? The file tree is completely empty. Iconic but also a little lonely, ngl 🙈.

By default, ramfs posts its service as ramfs using 9pserve(4). That's just its whole thing 💅.

• -S — this flag lets you specify an alternate service name for ramfs to use. Like a little nickname 🎀.
• -i — this one tells ramfs to use file descriptors 0 and 1 for its communication channel instead of creating a pipe 🫶. Why do we care? Because it makes it possible to use ramfs as a file server on a remote machine — file descriptors 0 and 1 will be the network channel from ramfs to the client machine. Remote file server slay 🔥.

Real talk though: this program is useful mainly as an example of how to write a user-level file server 👑. It can also be used to provide high-performance temporary files, which is honestly kind of a flex ⭐.

🎀 SOURCE 🎀

/src/cmd/ramfs.c — that's where the whole main character lives 🦋

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• 9p(3)
• 9pserve(4)

go read those too, iykyk 💜

alright bestie, that's the whole page 💖 it's the RAMFS(4) entry from the Kernel Interfaces Manual, straight out of /src/cmd/ramfs.c, and it ate, fr fr 🍓✨ periodt 💅