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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!inferno.mpx.com.au!news.unimelb.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!news.mel.connect.com.au!news.mira.net.au!inquo!bofh.dot!in-news.erinet.com!imci5!imci4!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!quack!quack.kfu.com!nsayer From: nsayer@quack.kfu.com (Nick Sayer) Subject: Re: MFS - Why? Message-ID: <nqcignn@quack.kfu.com> Sender: news@quack.kfu.com (0000-News(0000)) Organization: The Duck Pond public unix, +1 408 249 9630, log in as guest. References: <AEn4jRr0u3@qsar.chem.msu.su> <npX7tgO@quack.kfu.com> <833457338.26209.0@arg1.demon.co.uk> Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 17:36:22 UTC Lines: 28 Andrew Gordon <andrew.gordon@net-tel.co.uk> writes: >nsayer@quack.kfu.com (Nick Sayer) wrote: >>A lot of the time swap space is unused. Why? Because you have to plan >>for a maximum case, not an average case. Disk space you set aside for >>swap is therefore essentially wasted unless you spend a lot of time >>near maximal VM allocation. This is the one thing other OSes that have >>VM (win95, macos) have over Unix: they use unused disk space as swap >>transparently while Unix must have explicitly allocated swap >You can use the vnode driver (see vnconfig(8)) to allow swapping into a >regular file. It may not be quite as convenient as some other OSs, >but it certainly solves the problem. How? Once you add a swap area you can't remove it. So you can't prepare for a large job by adding temporary extra swap, do the work and then remove and dispose of this extra swap. That would be the only equivalent behavior. Solaris 2.x can do this, but FreeBSD can't. And in any case this behavior is not automatic. Don't get me wrong -- I still prefer FreeBSD to the alternatives, but not being able to 'swapoff' is a bit of a bummer. -- Nick Sayer <nsayer@quack.kfu.com> | N6QQQ @ N0ARY.#NORCAL.CA.USA.NOAM | Is it a "hate crime" to +1 408 249 9630, log in as 'guest' | hate Big Brother? URL: http://www.kfu.com/~nsayer/ |