Re: Swap partition vs swap file

Wakko Warner
2005-07-08T22:26:42Z

Jeremy Nickurak wrote:
> On ven, 2005-07-08 at 03:22 +0200, Bernd Eckenfels wrote:
> > No, it is creating files by appending just like any other file write. One
> > could think about a call to create unfragmented files however since this is
> > not always working best is to create those files young or defragment them
> > before usage.
>
> Except that this defeats one of the biggest advantages a swap file has
> over a swap partition: the ability to easilly reconfigure the amount of
> hd space reserved for swap.

Of course, now this begs the question: Is it possible to create a large file
w/o actually writing that much to the device (ie uninitialized). There's
absolutely no reason that a swap file needs to be fully initialized, only
part which mkswap does. Of course, I would expect that ONLY root beable to
do this. (or capsysadmin or whatever the caps are)

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