Configure memory backend

Help and Support
1

What is the problem you are having with rclone?

RAM usage more than 2 time higher compared to file size
Does anyone actually use ":memory:" backend ?
Is it similar to tmpfs?

Run the command 'rclone version' and share the full output of the command.

rclone v1.64.2

  • os/version: fedora 39 (64 bit)
  • os/kernel: 6.5.3-300.fc39.x86_64 (x86_64)
  • os/type: linux
  • os/arch: amd64
  • go/version: go1.21.3
  • go/linking: static
  • go/tags: none

Which cloud storage system are you using? (eg Google Drive)

The command you were trying to run (eg rclone copy /tmp remote:tmp)

rclone mount :memory: /mnt/tmp
cp 100MB /mnt/tmp

Please run 'rclone config redacted' and share the full output. If you get command not found, please make sure to update rclone.

Paste config here

A log from the command that you were trying to run with the -vv flag

Paste  log here
2

There is obviously some overhead. But it is only so drastic for small files, it looks much better for larger files.

I tried in the past for some tests but stopped as it was much slower than tmpfs. It was even slower than SSD drive:) I guess all user space fuse translations + VFS layer + object based storage model (you can't modify one byte without re-uploading all file) makes it not what one would expect from RAM performance.

Not sure what do you need this for but if you need RAM disk - use tmpfs - which is normal block storage.

3

The memory backend is used mostly for testing. It should be fully functional and can be useful but if you are going to mount it then tmpfs will be better as it is implemented in kernel and is much more careful with memory management.

The memory backend is bucket based so think of it like an in memory S3 and you'll have an idea of its capabilities.