what's /dev/shm

[Eric Wood]

Suhas Kamble wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Any ideas how the size of /dev/shm is decided? Can we increase it by 
> any way?
> We're testing it to mount as a filesystem and see if we can use it for 
> temp area for one of our application. We're running RHEL ES3.0
>
> has anyone used it? Are there any security hazards?
> Any inputs towards this will be greatly appreciated. regards,


I've used is since RH 7.1 for a fast ram drive.  I put read-only text 
files of our customer lists in that directory.  Having it in ram 
improved sed/grep searches.

-eric wood