Preload
preload is a program written by Behdad Esfahbod which runs as a daemon and records statistics about usage of programs using Markov chains; files of more frequently-used programs are, during a computer's spare time, loaded into memory. This results in faster startup times as less data needs to be fetched from disk. preload is often paired with prelink.
Contents
Installation
preload is available through pacman. In Arch Linux, just issue the command:
# pacman -S preload
Running the daemon
Systemd
Start directly with (as root)
# systemctl start preload.service
To start preload at system boot, type as root
# systemctl enable preload.service
rc.conf (deprecated)
Start directly with
# /etc/rc.d/preload start
To start preload at system boot, add it to the DAEMONS section in /etc/rc.conf:
DAEMONS =(... preload ...)
Configuration
The configuration file is /etc/preload.conf
, it contains default settings that should be suitable for regular users. The cycle
option lets you configure how often to ping the
preload system to update its model of which applications and libraries to cache.