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- Newsgroups: comp.os.linux
- Path: sparky!uunet!psinntp!pool!ujlh
- From: ujlh@pool.info.sunyit.edu (James Henrickson)
- Subject: Re: 0.97 patchlevel 3 available
- Message-ID: <1992Sep8.011444.21687@pool.info.sunyit.edu>
- Organization: State University of New York -- Institute of Technology
- References: <1992Sep5.184606.11361@klaava.Helsinki.FI> <1992Sep6.174044.28957@mo.hobby.nl> <1992Sep7.080727.22080@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
- Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 01:14:44 GMT
- Lines: 40
-
- In article <1992Sep7.080727.22080@klaava.Helsinki.FI> torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds) writes:
- >
- >And as people have been very concerned about the 16MB limit - don't
- >panic. It's not inherent to anything like the DOS 640kB limit, and is
- >there just because it was a bit easier to code that way - correcting it
- >later won't break anything. So while this version and the next may have
- >this limitation, it will go away (cleanly) - I just have to code some
- >more.
- >
- >In case anybody is wondering why there is a 16MB limit in the pl3 code,
- >it's very simple: I use a character array to store the swap-page-counts,
- >and that array just happens to be 4096 bytes long, as that's the biggest
- >easily allocable unit of memory in the current kernel. So I just
- >allocate 4096 bytes: 4096 swap-page-counters = 16MB swapspace. So the
- >only thing that I have to do to allow bigger swapfiles is to allocate
- >more memory - SMOP, but irritating and boring.
- >
- > Linus
-
- Is the new swapping code faster? If so, I don't have a problem with
- the 16 MB limit. If a system has the maximum amount of RAM, which
- is presently 16 MB, and needs more than 16 MB swap space on a regular
- basis, isn't it slow? Using an additional swap partition or file for
- more than 16 MB doesn't seem like a bad idea if they aren't needed
- on a regular basis. This gives the benefit of quicker swapping for
- regular use (if it is indeed faster), and only reduces performance
- when the extra space is needed (which might be way over on the
- opposite end of the disk!). If more than 32 MB of memory (16 MB
- RAM, 16 MB swap) is needed on a regular basis, wouldn't it be better
- to focus on adding better support for more RAM? Do any Linux users
- use more than 32 MB on a regular basis?
-
- Comments? Suggestions? Please post to the newsgroup for further
- discussion. Also, please correct me if I am missing something.
-
- --
- Jim H.
- *
- * James L. Henrickson
- * ujlh@sunyit.edu "Some day I might have a real .signature!"
-