Subject: Re: mfs woes
To: Steven M. Bellovin <smb@research.att.com>
From: Andrew Brown <atatat@atatdot.net>
List: tech-kern
Date: 07/13/2004 23:27:49
On Tue, Jul 13, 2004 at 11:17:20PM -0400, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
>In message <20040713230112.A426@noc.untraceable.net>, Andrew Brown writes:
>>
>>write a real swap-based file system?  mfs also comes with a ~2.9
>>gigabyte limit (on i386, at least).  when using USE_TOPDOWN_VM.  when
>>you're not, it comes with a ~1.8 gigabyte limit.  regardless of how
>>much ram or swap you have.
>
>Given the new buffer cache architecture, I've been wondering if mfs 
>even makes sense these days.  Perhaps a disk partition mounted with 
>async would provide comparable performance?  I don't know; I haven't 
>tried it.  But I'm getting ready to bring up a new machine; I might 
>reserve a partition and see what happens.

mfs still makes sense as a "simple place to keep transient files that
you don't need from one boot to the next".  newfs'ing or rmrf'ing /tmp
doesn't count, imho, because it doesn't scale.

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