> In some mail I received from Theodore Y. Ts'o, sie wrote
> >
> > [3] Can any of these systems have
> > a) swap files rather than partitions
> > b) dynamically growing swap space?
> > As far as I can make out, the answeris no!
> >
> > Linux can swap to files (multiple files if necessary), and there is a
> > user-mode daemon that can allow you to dyanmically grow swap space (by
> > allocating a new file).
>
> NetBSD has swapfiles and does not require a daemon to be running for more
> to be added. NetBSD has also since moved on from just swap(2) to having
> swapctl(2) which supports things like swap files/partitions with different
> priorities and a replacement program for swapon - swapctl(8).
>
> Darren
>
Hmm..
What kind of real work do you want to reaaaally want to do in swap. It's
slow as hell no matter which OS you use. It is really only a matter of
interactive performance staying at an acceptable level while these hogs
are running ala batch processing of old. If you have high speed low drag
disk systems (caching controllers.. aka ram), swap becomes fast.. but
then it should be fast.. it's ram.
Growable swapfiles is an excuse for not configuring the machine right
in the first place IMHO.
-Mike