On 2003-02-16 imp@bsdimp.com wrote:

> In message: <20030216205308.I24051@real-time.com>
>             Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom <chrome@real-time.com> writes:
> : I'm assuming that it generally makes the right decision about these things,
> : since it seems to be a competently-designed OS. :)
>
> It does.

  I don't think this is actually true, unless things changed in the last
release.  I twice tried to get my i386 NetBSD machine to be able to run
with disks spun down without success (I finally just got one of the new
quieter disks).  While part of the problem was file read page behavior and
the inability to lock particular files into the file cache, I am almost
positive that turning off swap had a big effect too.  It might not be that
hard to add a "don't page just swap" option, but until then it should be
assumed that swap will get used if it is there.

Matthew Orgass
darkstar@city-net.com