Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 21 Dec 1998 08:32:47 +1000 (EST) | From | Peter Waltenberg <> | Subject | Raw-io & Swap partitions |
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There seem to be fairly significant parallels between Linux's support of special partitions for swap, and the arguments for raw disk I/O.
If the arguments against raw-io are technically correct, why do we still support partition level access to swap ?
Assuming there's little performance difference between swap partitions and swap files, swap files are a big win. No hardwired decision on how much swap is needed, just create a swap file in one of the filesystems. If you find it's too big or too small it can be resized easilly. (Unlike a partition).
On the flip side, if swap partitions do give some advantages, surely the same justification can be made for supporting raw-io.
Note: I'm not saying the two cases are identical, just that there are fairly major simillarities.
I appreciate that it's far easier to keep something out of the kernel in the first place than to remove it later. However in the case of swap partitions I'm confident they could be removed painlessly. Just turn the partition into an e2fs one and create one large file. (Worst case).
Peter ---------------------------------- E-Mail: Peter Waltenberg <peterw@dascom.com> Date: 21-Dec-98 Time: 08:12:02
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