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ramBunctious 1.3.2 copyright © 1995 - 1999 by Clarkwood Software ramBunctious is a RAM disk program for the Macintosh. ramBunctious maintains the advantages and eliminates the disadvantages of other RAM disk programs. ramBunctious is a shareware program. It is not crippleware. A full set of HTML documentation is available at the ramBunctious web site. We recommend that you visit the site for the most updated, easy to use version of the ramBunctious documentation. <http://www.clarkwoodsoftware.com/rambunctious/> If you have questions or comments, email the authors at: rambunctious@clarkwoodsoftware.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Features and Usage ramBunctious is a RAM disk program with a rich set of features. ramBunctious maintains the advantages and eliminates the disadvantages of most RAM disk programs. Several options let you customize for your desired balance of speed, security, safety, and versatility. For example, you can set it to write through to a file on a (real) disk for safety in the event of a crash. You can mount as many RAM disks as you wish (or as many as you have memory for) simultaneously. ramBunctious uses the same memory that applications use, so the memory used for each RAM disk is instantly available for other applications when the RAM disk is put away. Its menus, dialogs, and windows allow easy management of your RAM disks, whether you use a single RAM disk or multiple RAM disks with customized settings for each. When you create a RAM disk, you can specify initial settings. These settings can be adjusted later using the RAM disk's settings window, and are discussed below. When you select "New RAM Disk..." from the File menu, a standard file dialog is presented. In addition to the standard controls to navigate and enter a RAM disk name, there are a few extra controls. The popup menu allows you to choose the size of your RAM disk. There are several pre-selected values, and you can enter any value by choosing "Other..." If Startup Items Folder is selected, a folder called "Startup Items" will be created automatically on your new RAM disk. Any files (or aliases) in this folder will be automatically opened when the RAM disk is mounted. This powerful feature allows you to conveniently open documents or applications when you start your RAM disk. The Open Status Window control determines if the settings window for the new RAM disk will be visible initially. This is only a convenience option, because you can always open and close the settings window after the RAM disk is mounted. The Automount Volume feature lets you start up your computer with a RAM disk already mounted. It works by automatically placing an alias to the new file in the startup items folder of the System folder. The RAM-only Volume checkbox lets you create a RAM disk without all the contents in an image file. All of these options can be adjusted after the RAM disk is created -- they exist here only for convenience while creating the RAM disk. ramBunctious has a fairly simple File menu. New RAM disk... prompts for a new RAM disk name and size; it then mounts the new volume, and makes it available for system use. Open... allows you to select a RAM disk image file; the RAM disk is mounted and available for normal use. Close closes the frontmost RAM disk settings window. Save performs a write-through for the RAM disk whose window is in front. Put Away unmounts the RAM disk whose window is in front. Register auto-launches the Register program to assist registering ramBunctious. Quit tries to put away all open RAM disks and exits the ramBunctious application. The RAM Disk menu lets you manipulate mounted RAM disks. When you select a RAM disk from the Put Away submenu, the selected RAM disk will be put away (unless it contains open files). There are three independent ways to put away RAM disks when you're done with them: you can use this Put Away submenu; you can quit ramBunctious; finally, you can put away the volume from Finder. Each mounted RAM disk has an item in the RAM disk menu; a check mark next to it indicates that its window is open. To open a RAM disk's window, select the item. If you select an item with a check mark already next to it, that window is brought to the front. The features of ramBunctious include: * You can have multiple RAM disks mounted simultaneously, limited only by memory available. * ramBunctious has a "write-through" option. When activated, everything written to the RAM disk is saved to a (real) file. This means that the next time you mount the RAM disk, all the contents are still there. It also adds protection against data loss in the event of a crash. * ramBunctious uses normal application memory. This means that when you're done using a RAM disk, that memory is available for other applications to use. In other words, you don't have to reboot to regain the memory. * A Startup Items folder on the RAM disk behaves like the Startup Items folder in the System Folder, except that all the enclosed items are opened when the RAM disk is mounted. You can put aliases to applications in this folder, and those applications will be launched when the RAM disk is mounted. * Each RAM disk may be configured to be mounted automatically when the computer is started up. * These options, and more, are fully user-configurable for each RAM disk via a status/settings window: o In addition to controls directing the behavior of the RAM disk, this window includes indicators that flicker when the RAM disk is being read from or written to: + A "read" icon flickers during reads from the RAM disk. + A "write" icon flickers during writes to the RAM disk. + A "write-through" icon indicates when ramBunctious is writing recent changes to the RAM disk image file. (Write-through takes place only if the appropriate settings are active.) This icon has another purpose as well; when the RAM disk has information that has not been written to the RAM disk image file, the write-through icon is filled. This means that the RAM disk is "dirty" and the next time a write-through happens, it will update the RAM disk image file. These indicators are similar to the access LEDs found on many hard drives. The latch control allows you to shrink a settings window so only the indicators are visible, or expand the settings window to adjust the options. o The help icon toggles balloon help. Use balloon help to clarify features of ramBunctious. o If Ram-only volume is selected, no information on the volume is saved to disk; it's all lost when you put away the RAM disk. o Disk-based volume specifies that a RAM disk image file holds the RAM disk contents. There are various options for maintaining RAM disk image files. o Write-through means that after information is written to the RAM disk, it is written "through" to the RAM disk image file. The benefit of write-through is that if your computer crashes, you won't lose information: it's written to a "real" file after it's written to the RAM disk, making it safer than other RAM disks. o Save at quit means that all changes to the RAM disk are remembered; then, when the RAM disk is put away, it writes all the changes to the RAM disk image file. o Ignore changes is a way to take a "snapshot" of the current RAM disk. In the future, when this RAM disk is mounted, its contents will be exactly what they were when you took the snapshot: subsequent changes will not be recorded to the RAM disk image file. o N Minute Saves is a popup menu that lets you choose to save periodically to the RAM disk image file. It will also save when the RAM disk is put away. o You can click the Save Now button any time the RAM disk is "dirty" -- any time it has information that has not been written through to the RAM disk image file. o The Automount Volume feature lets you start up your computer with a RAM disk already mounted. It works by automatically placing an alias to the RAM disk image file in the startup items folder of your startup disk's System folder. ramBunctious can be fully controlled by using AppleScript. For more information, see the ramBunctious dictionary (from AppleScript) and the example scripts included when you download ramBunctious. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Frequently Asked Questions Q. I'm having trouble creating a RAM disk. Can you give instructions for exactly how to create a RAM disk? A. Here is a step-by-step description of how you can create a RAM disk. 1. Open the ramBunctious application. 2. Select "New RAM Disk..." from the File menu. 3. Enter the name for your RAM disk (and the associated RAM disk image file). 4. You may edit the initial settings. There is a popup menu for choosing common RAM disk sizes. 5. After you click "Save", the system will automatically format the RAM disk and put it on your desktop. You now have successfully created a RAM disk. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q. I'm trying to create a RAM disk for my Netscape cache. I've created the RAM disk, but Netscape doesn't recognize it when I try to choose a cache location in the Options/Network Preferences dialog. A. Netscape caches must be some integral (1, 2, 3, ...) number of megabytes. Try creating a RAM disk that's 1440K. That's one MB to make Netscape happy, plus some "elbow room" for the invisible files and other overhead that the Mac OS automatically puts on every disk. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q. Performance is of the utmost importance to me. How can I make my ramBunctious RAM disk as fast as possible? A. A different way of looking at the issue is to explore what can slow a ramBunctious RAM disk down. One factor that affects performance is the write-through feature. If the RAM disk is not RAM-only -- that is, if it saves its contents to a file on a (real) disk, the driver needs to remember what parts of the RAM disk need to be updated. That's so it doesn't need to write out all the contents. It only writes out the bits that have changed. Another factor in ramBunctious performance, particularly noticeable with small chunk sizes, is the flickering LED-like access indicators. If a settings window is open, then every time the RAM disk is accessed, that flickering is drawn to the screen. Finally, if multiple RAM disks are on the desktop, a small amount of time is spent figuring out which one is the one asking for attention. To summarize, the fastest ramBunctious RAM disk is a single RAM-only RAM disk with the settings window closed. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q. Is there a way to use a ramBunctious RAM disk as a startup disk? A. Unfortunately, no. In order to work around the limitation, you can try what several ramBunctious users have done: set up a minimal Apple RAM disk to start up from, then use ramBunctious RAM disks for all the stuff you typically work on. The reason that ramBunctious cannot be used as a startup disk is based on a crucial design decision we made. ramBunctious uses temporary memory, also known as "Process Manager Heap" memory or Multifinder memory. Some RAM disk programs (like Apple's RAM disk control panel) use system memory -- high memory above BufPtr -- which enables them to be used as startup disks. Here are some of the reasons for our decision to use temporary memory for the RAM disks: * It allows the user to reclaim the memory by simply unmounting the RAM disk; with RAM disks using memory above BufPtr, the computer needs to be restarted to reclaim the RAM disk's memory. * We wanted to allow the user to have multiple RAM disks online simultaneously. This was unfeasible using memory above BufPtr. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q. Why use write-through? Doesn't that degrade the performance, defeating the purpose of a RAM disk? A. Writing through does cause a performance hit when writing to a RAM disk, but it maintains a safe RAM disk image file by ensuring that changes are written to a real disk file. Furthermore, reading from the RAM disk is where the greatest benefit occurs, since reading only looks at the RAM disk and has no need to access the RAM disk image file. A typical real-world example is compiling and linking an application. A compiler has to read all the files it compiles, some repeatedly, and writes a relatively small amount. By enabling the write-through feature of ramBunctious, your gain the advantage of fast reads from a RAM disk while maintaining the security of having new information in a real file on a real hard drive in the real world. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q. Can ramBunctious be used to feed the hungry, heal the sick, stop wars, and guarantee equal justice for all? A. Yes. But the explanation is complex; if we gave a full explanation, the only people who would understand the answer would be you and us. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q. What are some uses of ramBunctious? A. We have found that users of ramBunctious use it in a variety of ways, including: * Most web browsers use a cache to remember recently-visited sites. Netscape (and Internet Explorer 2.1 and up) allows you to choose where to put the cache. Using a RAM disk for a cache allows virtually instantaneous access to web pages you've previously visited. Furthermore, some versions of Netscape are acessing the cache constantly, and using a RAM disk decreases the irritation of this constant hard-drive chatter. * Programmers use ramBunctious to speed up project builds. When a project file and all the source code for a project are on a RAM disk, the development system can use the lightning speed of the RAM disk to drastically reduce the time required to build a project. * Some users like the security implications of a RAM disk. If the RAM disk is not mounted, it is impossible to examine the disk; no one can pry into folders, no one can load sensitive files, and no one can undelete files. * PowerBook users are often concerned with battery usage; a RAM disk doesn't have the relatively high power requirements of a hard drive. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q. Are there any products known to be incompatible with ramBunctious? A. As far as we know, ramBunctious doesn't trounce around doing skanky things. There are, however, some conflicts with existing products. * MountImage causes problems with several installers and other programs that need to eject disks. ramBunctious needs to unmount RAM disks, and MountImage interferes with that unmounting process. In fact, the author of MountImage has announced that he no longer supports MountImage. ramBunctious detects MountImage and refuses to run if MountImage is installed. Apple's DiskCopy utility is an elegant replacement for MountImage; it handles everything MountImage does without conflicting with other applications. * The LanRover extension seems to behave poorly with any application that uses temporary memory (also known as MultiFinder memory, or the "Process Manager Heap"); since ramBunctious uses temporary memory for the RAM disks, the LanRover extension often conflicts with ramBunctious. This behavior has been seen with LanRover version 3.7.3. * Norton Utilities 2.0 included a module called Directory Assistant II that modified standard file dialogs. Their modifications are incompatible with the ramBunctious "New" dialog. To create new RAM disks with ramBunctious, restart the computer with extensions disabled (hold "shift" down), or remove Directory Assistant and reboot. Norton Utilities 3.0 and later don't include Directory Assistant, by the way. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Q. You guys don't work in a vacuum. Surely there are people who have been helpful when working on ramBunctious. A. There are many people who have helped, and without whose assistance we wouldn't be able to make ramBunctious the product it is. * Fawzi Dormeyer. Thanks for localizing ramBunctious to French, but thanks even more for your enthusiastic help and hard work overhauling ramBunctious's appearance. * Chris Pethick. Thanks, Chris, for helping us grok some of the innards of the ToolBox. You've helped us both concretely and abstractly. * Troy Gaul. Thanks for great-looking, easy-to-implement windoids. Many Mac programs are better because of the freeware Infinity Windoids. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Glossary Chunk Size Files can be accessed on RAM disks (or any media, for that matter) in a variety of ways. "Chunk Size" refers to the size of data accessed from the RAM disk. The smallest possible chunk size is 512 bytes, or 1/2 K. The largest theoretical chunk size is the size of the whole RAM disk! Sometimes the system chooses what the chunk size should be, and sometime the application software decides. For example, if the application software tries to read a file one character at a time, the system reads 512 bytes and remembers what's there when the application reads the next character. On the other hand, an application can choose to read large chunks, and these large chunk sizes are essentially the chunk sizes seen by the RAM disk driver. Typically, larger chunk sizes lead to higher throughput, since most of the time can be spent actually reading the file instead of figuring out where on the RAM disk the file is, and other overhead tasks. Crippleware Many shareware programs are crippled in order to force users to register before they have a full-featured application. Other shareware programs force users to wait a few extra seconds before they can begin using the program. Still others present a dialog every time so users will feel guilty enough to pay. RAM disk RAM disks are a convenient way to achieve high performance in many applications. Hard drive accesses are hundreds of times slower than memory accesses. RAM disks set aside an amount of memory that the system can then use as a "normal" hard drive, floppy drive, or any other storage device -- except that they're much faster. Typical advantages of RAM disks include: * The biggest advantage of RAM disks is speed. As mentioned above, memory accesses are much faster than hard drive, floppy disk, or network accesses. * Another advantage of RAM disks is small file overhead. In versions of the MacOS before 8.1, each file grows in increments of 1/65536 of the total hard drive size. In other words, even if a file is only a few characters long, on a one-gigabyte hard drive it will take up 16K! Since a RAM disk is typically a very small volume, the space lost to file allocation is minimized. * RAM disks can provide safety as well. Many people use RAM disks as web browser cache volumes for this reason. If the disk somehow becomes corrupted, then the damage is localized to the RAM disk and doesn't affect the system hard drive. * Security is a concern for many people. By using a RAM disk that is easily mounted and unmounted from the desktop, you can more easily isolate sensitive material. Note that using a RAM disk is no substitute for rigorous encryption; nevertheless, it can help prevent casual snoopers from digging through your material. Typical disadvantages of RAM disks include: * Many RAM disk programs do not save the contents of the RAM disk to a file on a (real) disk. This means that crashes or power failures cause the contents of the RAM disk to be lost. Some RAM disks that do save the contents do so only when the RAM disk is put away. ramBunctious has a write-through feature available that saves the contents as soon as the RAM disk changes. * Most RAM disk programs only allow one RAM disk to be available at a time. If you have a RAM disk mounted, and realize that you have important information on another RAM disk, it can be frustrating to juggle RAM disks to access your information. ramBunctious allows you to mount as many RAM disks as you have memory for. * Many RAM disk programs require you to reboot before you can see the RAM disk. They also require you to reboot before you can reclaim the memory used by the RAM disk. ramBunctious uses the same memory that applications use, so it can create a RAM disk without rebooting, and you can reclaim memory used by the RAM disks instantly by putting them away. Shareware ramBunctious is a shareware program. That means you are free to try it before you buy it. Shareware is basically the honor system applied to software. If, after thirty days, you find yourself using it, please pay for it. The honor system is particularly applicable to ramBunctious, since it is not crippleware. Although we may have increased registrations by implementing nagging dialogs or removing functionality, we felt that our time was better spent working directly on improving ramBunctious. Prices for ramBunctious: $12 single-user license $100 site license $350 world-wide license (All prices are in U.S. dollars) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Legalisms Every effort was made to ensure that ramBunctious maintains data integrity; furthermore, ramBunctious worked on every MacOS system we tested. (These include the Mac SE, Classic II, LC II, Mac IIsi, Performa 630CD, Quadra 800, Quadra 840AV, PowerBook 5300, Performa 6290, PowerMac 7100/80, PowerMac 8100/80, PowerMac 9500/132, Power Computing 604e/200, Mac G3, and MAE 2.1.) However, although we believe ramBunctious is stable and safe, there are no guarantees: you use ramBunctious at your own risk. If you do find a problem with the program, please report it to rambunctious@kagi.com. ramBunctious is copyright © 1995 - 1998 by Elden Wood and Bob Clark. It is freely distributable, provided no more than a nominal copying fee is charged for the media. Please send notification to rambunctious@clarkwoodsoftware.com if you plan to include ramBunctious in any shareware collections or distribute ramBunctious on CD. Permission will likely be granted. If the Software is licensed for use by the U.S. government, the user agrees that the Software has been developed entirely at private expense and is delivered as "Commercial Computer Software" as defined in DFARS 252.227-7013 or as "restricted computer software" as defined in FAR 52.227-19, as appropriate. No animals were harmed during creation of this product.