From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Chase Venters Subject: Re: [RFC] VM: I have a dream... Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 23:46:02 -0600 Message-ID: <200601222346.24781.chase.venters@clientec.com> References: <200601212108.41269.a1426z@gawab.com> <986ed62e0601221155x6a57e353vf14db02cc219c09@mail.gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: "Barry K. Nathan" , Al Boldi , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org Return-path: Received: from relay01.pair.com ([209.68.5.15]:45327 "HELO relay01.pair.com") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S964808AbWAWFq3 (ORCPT ); Mon, 23 Jan 2006 00:46:29 -0500 To: Michael Loftis In-Reply-To: Content-Disposition: inline Sender: linux-fsdevel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-fsdevel.vger.kernel.org On Sunday 22 January 2006 23:23, Michael Loftis wrote: > --On January 22, 2006 11:55:37 AM -0800 "Barry K. Nathan" > > wrote: > > On 1/21/06, Al Boldi wrote: > >> A long time ago, when i was a kid, I had dream. It went like this: > > > > [snip] > > > > FWIW, Mac OS X is one step closer to your vision than the typical > > Linux distribution: It has a directory for swapfiles -- /var/vm -- and > > it creates new swapfiles there as needed. (It used to be that each > > swapfile would be 80MB, but the iMac next to me just has a single 64MB > > swapfile, so maybe Mac OS 10.4 does something different now.) Just as a curiosity... does anyone have any guesses as to the runtime performance cost of hosting one or more swap files (which thanks to on demand creation and growth are presumably built of blocks scattered around the disk) versus having one or more simple contiguous swap partitions? I think it's probably a given that swap partitions are better; I'm just curious how much better they might actually be. Cheers, Chase