> >But the -other- reason to float the ideas here is to get a general
> >concensus "blessing" that something like this makes sense and, if it were
> >implemented well, it would be included in a future kernel.
> 
> Uh, from what i've read, what I'm seeing is more a consensus that this
> doesn't make sense and its not what we want.

I don't get that impression at all!  From what I've seen, I've answered
every critic, and backed off from the "auto defrag" assertion.

In fact, it seems a better and better idea the more I answer the concerns.


>The fundamental reason is that the `flexibility' you want acually has
>negative utility in many environments.

Please explaing exactly why this is so, or give me pointers so I can read
the research papers explaining why this is so.


>VM/CMS used a very similar policy for each VM's `virtual memory' on
>their godforsaken minidisks: VMs `paged' to unallocated filespace on
>their minidisk.  I cant recall that it being anything but an unmitigated pain.

Could you please be more specific than "unmitigated pain"? 

Also, let's consider the "typical" piece of h/w that I think will be common
when I finish writing this code: An Alpha or Merced at >= 500 MHz
with at least 1/4 GB of DRAM and around 50 GB of disk.

-mac