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Re: Why not swap to files?



On Sun, 01 Jun 1997 12:32:14 PDT Robert de Forest (robert@got.net) 
wrote:

> By default most linux distributions request and almost require that the
> user setup a swap partition. What is the advantage of swapping to a
> partition rather than swapping to a file? In my machine I have a /swap
> directory. As needed I can create files in this directory using dd as
> per the mkswap manpage and then swap on that.

Speed: going through the filesystem for a potentially non-contiguous 
swap area is way slower than swapping to a partition...

> I've been thinking of setting up a background task to watch `free` to
> see if I need more or less swapspace and automatically add or remove it
> as necessary. Since I have 64M of ram this hasn't been a big priority,
> just something I thought would be fun.

This already exists. It's not debianized yet and is called swapd (look on sunsite).

Phil.



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