Re: shmem or swapfs? was: [Patch] make shm filesystem part configurable

["James H. Cloos Jr." <cloos@jhcloos.com>]

>>>>> "Christoph" == Christoph Rohland <cr@sap.com> writes:

Christoph> OK right now I see two alternatives for the name: "tmpfs"
Christoph> for the SUN admins and "vmfs" for expressing what it does
Christoph> and to be in line with "ramfs". Any votes?

I think vmfs is the better choice.  Not to be gratuitously
incompatable with sun, but there is no guarentee linux's
implementation and sun's will be or remain compatable, so it really
doesn't hurt to choose a name which is more descriptive rather than
that used by someone else's product -- even if the other product is
widely deployed and understood.

>> I'd prefer k for ISO standard and K for base-2.  Of course m isn't
>> millibytes, but that isn't horrible.

Christoph> No, I would go for base-2 only. That's what we typically
Christoph> mean with K and M in the IT world. To be case sensitive is
Christoph> IMHO overkill and confusing.

Unquestionably the Right Thing.  VM is after all being measured, and
RAM is always measured in binary.  (OK, I just *know* someone will
provide a counter-example disproving that assertion -- perhaps the old
36 bit systems?  Or core?  But are there any modern counter-examples?)

-JimC
-- 
James H. Cloos, Jr.  <http://jhcloos.com/public_key>     1024D/ED7DAEA6 
<cloos@jhcloos.com>  E9E9 F828 61A4 6EA9 0F2B  63E7 997A 9F17 ED7D AEA6
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