From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261726AbVGIW7U (ORCPT ); Sat, 9 Jul 2005 18:59:20 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261756AbVGIW7U (ORCPT ); Sat, 9 Jul 2005 18:59:20 -0400 Received: from dslb138.fsr.net ([12.7.7.138]:45230 "EHLO sandall.us") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261726AbVGIW7T (ORCPT ); Sat, 9 Jul 2005 18:59:19 -0400 Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2005 15:59:39 -0700 (PDT) From: Eric Sandall X-X-Sender: sandalle@cerberus To: Wakko Warner cc: Jeremy Nickurak , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Swap partition vs swap file In-Reply-To: <20050708224106.GA10649@animx.eu.org> Message-ID: References: <1120836958.16935.1.camel@localhost> <20050708224106.GA10649@animx.eu.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Fri, 8 Jul 2005, Wakko Warner wrote: > Jeremy Nickurak wrote: >> On ven, 2005-07-08 at 03:22 +0200, Bernd Eckenfels wrote: >>> No, it is creating files by appending just like any other file write. One >>> could think about a call to create unfragmented files however since this is >>> not always working best is to create those files young or defragment them >>> before usage. >> >> Except that this defeats one of the biggest advantages a swap file has >> over a swap partition: the ability to easilly reconfigure the amount of >> hd space reserved for swap. > > Of course, now this begs the question: Is it possible to create a large file > w/o actually writing that much to the device (ie uninitialized). There's > absolutely no reason that a swap file needs to be fully initialized, only > part which mkswap does. Of course, I would expect that ONLY root beable to > do this. (or capsysadmin or whatever the caps are) That would make the swap file fragment as it's used, instead of allocating one big file (the entire file) at once (and hopefully get one contiguous chunk of the disk). - -sandalle - -- Eric Sandall | Source Mage GNU/Linux Developer eric@sandall.us | http://www.sourcemage.org/ http://eric.sandall.us/ | SysAdmin @ Inst. Shock Physics @ WSU http://counter.li.org/ #196285 | http://www.shock.wsu.edu/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFC0FbfHXt9dKjv3WERApKjAJ9ZObnrYWCmTyZW0ChggtgGjTKIvQCfbnvm /U4zfjTYqMxEd5vmIRe1wbM= =smCj -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----