Would it be possible to subdivide the existing swap device into two
devices, either through an extended swapon(2) call, or through a mini
file system (with hopefully negligible overhead)?
I think many people will want to keep their existing partitioning,
and don't want to be told they have to repartition just because a
performance bug in Linux has been found.
Thinking about it, the mini file system may be just the right solution.
mount -t partition -osizes=60M,10M /dev/sda2 /swap
mkswap /swap/0
mkswap --shared-pages /swap/1
swapon /swap/0
swapon /swap/1
This would also allow for swap partitions larger than 128M: The
partitioning file system would split them into 128M pieces, which
would then be added as swap separately.
Of course, one can as well put a real partition table onto the swap
partition - but this will result in the usualy ugly device
renumbering.
What do you think?
Martin