linux man page for ramdiskadm

ramdiskadm(1M)                                            System Administration Commands                                            ramdiskadm(1M)

NAME
       ramdiskadm - administer ramdisk pseudo device

SYNOPSIS
       /usr/sbin/ramdiskadm -a name size [g | m | k | b]

       /usr/sbin/ramdiskadm -d name

       /usr/sbin/ramdiskadm

DESCRIPTION
       The ramdiskadm command administers ramdisk(7D), the ramdisk driver. Use ramdiskadm to create a new named ramdisk device, delete an existing
       named ramdisk, or list information about existing ramdisks.

       Ramdisks created using ramdiskadm are not persistent across reboots.

OPTIONS
       The following options are supported:

       -a name size

           Create a ramdisk named name of size size and its corresponding block and character device nodes.

           name must be composed only of the characters a-z, A-Z, 0-9, _ (underbar), and - (hyphen), but it must not begin with a hyphen. It  must
           be no more than 32 characters long. Ramdisk names must be unique.

           The  size  can  be  a  decimal  number, or, when prefixed with 0x, a hexadecimal number, and can specify the size in bytes (no suffix),
           512-byte blocks (suffix b), kilobytes (suffix k), megabytes (suffix m) or gigabytes (suffix g). The size of the ramdisk  actually  cre-
           ated might be larger than that specified, depending on the hardware implementation.

           If the named ramdisk is successfully created, its block device path is printed on standard out.

       -d name

           Delete  an  existing  ramdisk of the name name. This command succeeds only when the named ramdisk is not open. The associated memory is
           freed and the device nodes are removed.

           You can delete only ramdisks created using ramdiskadm. It is not possible to delete a ramdisk that was created during the boot process.

       Without options, ramdiskadm lists any existing ramdisks, their sizes (in decimal), and whether they can be removed by ramdiskadm  (see  the
       description of the -d option, above).

EXAMPLES
       Example 1: Creating a 2MB Ramdisk Named mydisk

       # ramdiskadm -a mydisk 2m
       /dev/ramdisk/mydisk

       Example 2: Listing All Ramdisks

       # ramdiskadm
       Block Device                   Size  Removable
       /dev/ramdisk/miniroot     134217728    No
       /dev/ramdisk/certfs         1048576    No
       /dev/ramdisk/mydisk         2097152    Yes

EXIT STATUS
       ramdiskadm returns the following exit values:

       0

           Successful completion.

       >0

           An error occurred.

ATTRIBUTES
       See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE         |      ATTRIBUTE VALUE        |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Availability                 |SUNWcsr                      |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Interface Stability          |Evolving                     |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

SEE ALSO
       attributes(5), ramdisk(7D)

NOTES
       The  abilities  of  ramdiskadm  and  the  privilege  level  of  the  person  who  uses  the  utility  are  controlled by the permissions of
       /dev/ramdiskctl. Read access allows query operations, for example, listing device information. Write access is required to  do  any  state-
       changing operations, for example, creating or deleting ramdisks.

       As  shipped,  /dev/ramdiskctl is owned by root, in group sys, and mode 0644, so all users can do query operations but only root can perform
       state-changing operations. An administrator can give write access to non-privileged users, allowing them to add or  delete  ramdisks.  How-
       ever, granting such ability entails considerable risk; such privileges should be given only to a trusted group.

SunOS 5.10                                                          25 Mar 2003                                                     ramdiskadm(1M)