Subject: Re: kernel vs boot-program
To: John Brezak <brezak@apollo.hp.com>
From: Chris G. Demetriou <cgd@postgres.Berkeley.EDU>
List: tech-kern
Date: 03/14/1994 14:54:41
> > in my posession is an extension to the swapping code, which does
> > non-interleaved swapping for certain devices, e.g. 'vnode' devices,
> > but they still need to be specified at config time.
> Why can't you start interleaving as devices (files) get added ?

because the swap code we have doesn't support that.  Perhaps it will
be done in the future (e.g. after 4.4-Lite is released and merged),
but that doesn't work now.

> I believe (others jump in please) that it uses the NFS code to swap to a file
> in NFS. It needs to have an NFS filehandle and this is one of the parts under
> discussion. I really don't like having to have this mechanism. I really would
> like to have an entry in /etc/fstab like
> 
> mother:/export/son/.paging_space	none	swap 	sw 0 0
> 
> And let a "swapon -a" do the work. Until this time just don't page.

except that *that* does ugly things if you'd like to keep a
mostly-common root parititon.

it should be *possible* for the kernel to swapping to a vnode w/no
post-boot intervention (i.e. swapon -a shouldn't be *necessary*),
just like it's not currently necessary, to enable the primary swap
partition.


cgd

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