From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262375AbVF2BEs (ORCPT ); Tue, 28 Jun 2005 21:04:48 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262388AbVF2BCI (ORCPT ); Tue, 28 Jun 2005 21:02:08 -0400 Received: from zproxy.gmail.com ([64.233.162.194]:37203 "EHLO zproxy.gmail.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262394AbVF2A5Z convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Tue, 28 Jun 2005 20:57:25 -0400 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:reply-to:to:subject:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition; b=OQQLs4ZbqXFpfEnGW2a1F2Zr3xPMZ59Ylub3u0ypaoXMUdYC7nhrn9ekJ1FuqtU4UiUl1LWKwDTynD02jZLwkPPUcotq+EWYeSFwuEiU44gPv6NEu9s+S0yOqX+tVmOzGVvrwtLLyaFjo1csIbTHpq7xsoUD8MbZbby0hGn+ruM= Message-ID: <516d7fa80506281757188b2fda@mail.gmail.com> Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 00:57:21 +0000 From: Mike Richards Reply-To: Mike Richards To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Swap partition vs swap file Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Content-Disposition: inline Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Is there any significant difference these days between a swap partition and a swap file? An exhaustive Google search turns up several conflicting answers. The consensus seems to be that a swap partition is more efficient than a swap file, but whether or not the difference is noteworthy is never definitively answered. For the sake of argument, let's assume you've got modern hardware with ample RAM and a recent kernel (a late 2.4.x or 2.6.x), and that under normal conditions you never seeing more than 50-100MB of swap used. Given this situation, is there any significant performance or stability advantage to using a swap partition instead of a swap file?