Zicroram's Official Shareware Github.
ABOUT ZICRORAM'S SHAREWARE VERSION
RULES FOR IDENTATION AND COMMENTS IN .ZICRORAM FILES
RESTORING DATA FROM POWER BLACKOUTS, SYSTEM CRASHES OR FREEZES
ADDING PROGRAM/DATA TO RAM ON SYSTEM STARTUP
OPERATING SYSTEM SUPPORT || SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Zicroram is a C/C++ Ramdisk Command-Line Tool for Linux TMPFS/RAMFS that adds further ramdrive capabilities:
1 - Adding(Synchronously and Assynchronously) Data to RAM(--add or --addc)
2 - Checking Status (--usage or --usagel)
3 - Removing Data from RAM(--remove-all or --remove)
4 - Restoring Data from DISK Back into RAM (--restore)
5 - Backing up data from RAM Into disk (--mmbackup and --mtbackup)
6 - Copying programs on system bootup (--boots or --bootsc)
7 - More instructions & commands (--help, --help-setup, --help-program, --help-info)
8 - Troubleshoot (--troubleshoot)
The program also includes a man page, you can read it once the program is installed on the system:
$ man zicroram
The use of the shareware version here available is limited to 17GB of RAM. The user can keep using this program indefinitely, until they reach the specified data size restrictions, which can be simply removed by excluding any data that has been added while by using the --remove command. Full version features no limitations, however full version won't be available to public use for free.
The shareware limitation is imposed on zicroram's side only; this means no limitation is ever set on the Linux Operating System nor it's configuration files and none of the TMPFS/RAMFS Kernel Modules settings.
The restriction is hard-coded within the program only, for limitting only how much the user can access the program's utility and not to completely restrict user access to the functions given by linux.
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For those who are under Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux), you can still normally use the program, however if you(or the system) ever makes any changes to SELinux metadata features for a given specific data, those changes can't be detected as of yet and therefore not backed up from ram to disk on user request when using '--mmbackup', '--mtbackup', '--checks', '--mmremove'. Any other types of changes will be detected and backed up normally.
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Reflink file support is non-existent; currently, neither TMPFS nor RAMFS supports CoW/Reflink data; in other words as of this date it'd be impossible to give it support today. However, this is only a problem when doing DATA BACKUPS using '--mmbackup', '--mtbackup', '--mmremove' after changing/editing/updating the reflinked file in RAM. If no editing of reflinked files takes place, then doing DATA BACKUPS isn't a problem and should be fine.
About Current Limitation on REFLINK: There's zero support on TMPFS/RAMFS, so there's literally nothing that can currently be done.
Workaround for SELinux: If you really need to work with SELinux filesystem features, you can still use this program and either write/code or use alternative backup tool(s) for your specific data.
At the far right side of the screen - at the top of this page - you'll find a 'RELEASE' section and once you click in it, you'll then be taken to a page describing the version and changes made to the program on that version. At the 'Assets' section of that page, you can download the program under the name " zicroram.x86-64.glibc.tar.gz "; the '.tar.gz' is a tar compressed file and after downloading it, it'll need to be uncompressed using the 'tar' tool:
Extracting into current directory:
$ tar xvf ./zicroram.tar.gz;
or, extracting in a new directory:
$ mkdir ./new_dir;
$ tar xvf ./zicroram.tar.gz -C ./new_dir;
Installation can be realized through it's commandline interface(CLI) through any terminal emulator installed on your linux distribution :
$ ./zicroram --install-wizard
The program will automatically request root authorization for the user if necessary.
Uninstallation can only be done once after the program is fully installed :
$ zicroram --uninstall
If you go through problems during uninstallation, make sure you close any programs that you might be running after adding them to RAM using zicroram.
Program can easily be updated whenever a new version exists server-side:
$ zicroram --update
The program works by creating and mounting a TMPFS device called /zicroram/ and allowing the user to add any data through a simple command, like for example:
$ zicroram --add ~/Pictures ~/Music ~/Downloads
After doing this, the program will bind mount the real path where the data was located, targetting the newly created TMPFS mounted device, allowing the user to use his data in RAM as if it was still on the disk; The original data will be renamed to keep it safe.
In case of system crash or power blackout, as soon as your system reboots, data can be easily restored to it's original path using:
$ zicroram --restore
The above command will put the original files back in place, after umounting the bind mount.
Many more commands can be found by typing:
$ zicroram --help
The --help command will list and thoroughly explain each of the commands.
A file with a .zicroram extension can be optionally created to make it easy adding programs and/or group of programs into ram in such a way that the user doesn't have to worry about creating a shell(bash/zsh) script.
To do this, simply create a file with an extension called '.zicroram', then make sure each line corresponds to a directory or file of your choice; you can then add as much data(ex.: pictures, songs, etc..) as you want in this single file. example:
[file: ~/my_programs.zicroram]
#GIMP - Image Editor:
/usr/share/gimp
#GVIM - Text Editor:
/usr/share/gvim
#Personal Files/Documents:
~/Music
~/Pictures #My Pictures
~/Documents #My Documents
[/file]
Note that you SHOULD NOT have to use the notation for file that is located between brackets: '[' and ']'. The brackets are only meant so that the user understands those are the pertaining contents of a given file.
Now you can add all data using a single command:
$ ./zicroram --add ~/my_programs.zicroram
As you have seen in the example above, you can add comments to lines, create comment lines and make use of text-ident for better readability and maintainability of the .zicroram files; for doing this you need to follow these rules below.
1 - You can create text identation using Tabulation(Tab) Key or white(blank) space key.
2 - For creating a comment line, you can add '#' character at the start of a line.
3 - To create a comment line at the same line as an existing data, you can use Tabulation(Tab) Key and '#' character.
The previous topic above provides a full example: CREATING ZICRORAM FILES
With the --restore instruction it's possible to recover previously existing data that is still located on the disk; however, it's important to understand that changes that might have been made while data was into ram is now permanently lost at this point if you didn't made a backup with --mtbackup, --mmbackup or --mmremove:
$ zicroram --restore
Restore is only possible, because zicroram renames the original data before creating a dummy data, then bind mounting and copying the desired program(or data) into ram; the dummy data is only used for bind mounting files/directory. the --restore instruction will simply remove the dummy data and remove the bind mount(by umounting), then it'll move and rename the original data back to where it was originally located on the disk.
because of this, do not forget to use --mmbackup or --mtbackup if you need to.
Adding programs into ram in this specific case can be achieved by adding 'zicroram --boots ..' inside your .bash_profile( for bash users ) or .zprofile ( for zsh users ) file:
for ZSH users:
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system wide configuration file:
[file: /etc/zsh/zprofile] zicroram --boots ~/my_programs.zicroram [/file] -
user configuration file:
[file: ~/.zprofile] zicroram --boots ~/my_programs.zicroram [/file]
for BASH users:
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system wide configuration file:
[file: /etc/profile] zicroram --boots ~/my_programs.zicroram [/file] -
user configuration file:
[file: ~/.bash_profile] zicroram --boots ~/my_programs.zicroram [/file]
Note that you do not have to use the notation for file that is located between brackets: '[' and ']'. The brackets are only meant here so that the user understands this is the contents of a file.
The --boots instruction outputs to screen a copy-to-ram progress and makes the user wait for the whole process to finish, however depending on the program and/or how fast your hard drive is, it's possible to bypass this step and avoid all the 'waiting' during system startup; if such is the case, then use --bootsc instead of --boots - However, currently it's not possible to check copy progress after bypassing it with such option.
Check the manual after installing for more information on --boots and --bootsc:
$ man zicroram
or
$ zicroram --help-program
If you use something other than 'bash' and 'zsh', like 'tcsh' you'll have to search for it's system/user configuration file(s) and do the same described here.
Upon program installation using zicroram --install-wizard the user must agree with the displayed use license; if the user doesn't agree with one or more terms the installation will be cancelled and the user should give up installation of the program at once.
The sole developer doesn't take any lyability for the mistakes that may arise from using a RamDisk(or RamDrive) software; since RAM Storage isn't a persistent type of storage, important data may be permanently lost forever with no means of recover.
If you don't agree with the USE LICENSE of this program, do not use it! You've been warned.
Zicroram should work on all GNU Linux Distributions out-of-box as long as they support:
1 - GLIBC 2.34 or greater version
2 - TMPFS Enabled kernel.
Zicroram runs as an administrative tool on your system, so administrator/root access will be required.
On windows - as of current date - Zicroram is only available on WSL2 Linux Distros; WSL1 does not support TMPFS or RAMFS and instead creates a paging file and use it as RAM Memory on your hard disk instead of using the actual physical RAM thus making the program pointless.
The program in here was sole developed by a single dev,
get in contact with him on the email provided in the binary release of this program and also the one in here:
Email: srmfsrmf@hotmail.com
If you've found a bug, you're welcome to open an issue and report it in this github. DO NOT SEND bugs or problems over email, they'll be automatically ignored and treated as junk.
The binary program offers a quickhand page on troubleshooting that you can read regardless if the program is installed on the system:
$ ./zicroram --troubleshoot
This command is important as it describes most of the common issues users may have to deal with and how to either solve or avoid those problems.