Swapfile

Dirk-Jan Koopman (djk@dirku.demon.co.uk)
Sun, 1 Oct 1995 13:15:28 +0100 (BST)


I was wondering the other day whether, in this modern day & age, we need
to have separate swap partitions? What with running X, doing a longish
print in netscape and only 32Mb of RAM, I was swapping and couldn't I
hear it!

Is it really necessary? We go to all this trouble to optimise access by
careful layout and block allocation in ext2fs and then blow the whole lot
out of the water by partitioning the disc in such a way as to maximise
the head movement (and thus minimising apparent computer speed and
usability) when we have to swap.

In the olden days of George 3 (wonderful operating system) we could at
least 'pie chart' file system discs with swap partitions - this worked
very well - but my original question still holds, can we not just use
'special' files in ext2fs?

--
Dirk-Jan Koopman       Tel/Fax: +44 1362 696076 Mobile: +44 973 333806
Computer Consultant    Email: djk@dirku.demon.co.uk or G1TLH@GB7TLH.#35.GBR.EU
"The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than
the piano when played by a sister or near relation." --Oscar Wilde