Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!adm!Ed@MEAD.SCRC.Symbolics.COM From: Ed@MEAD.SCRC.Symbolics.COM (Ed Schwalenberg) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: RAM disk as /dev/swap Message-ID: <10704@brl-adm.ARPA> Date: Mon, 7-Dec-87 11:56:54 EST Article-I.D.: brl-adm.10704 Posted: Mon Dec 7 11:56:54 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 12-Dec-87 13:05:56 EST Sender: news@brl-adm.ARPA Lines: 21 From: "Robert C. White"Subject: /dev/swap - possibility of it being a ramdisk Date: 6 Dec 87 21:29:22 GMT Watching my poor little unix boxes swap, it occurred to me: why not utilize some extra ram to implement /dev/swap? It seems that the machine would speed up quite a bit, and hey, extra memory is pretty inexpensive, at least for the smaller unix boxes. Also, it would be tactically easier to increase the amount of "swap" memory as opposed to repartitioning my disks, or mounting a disk pack under /tmp or some other horrid kludge. Given a fixed amount of RAM, it's far better to simply make it all be "main memory" than to steal some of it and declare it "swap space". If the RAM is just there, the pages won't have to be swapped at all, and you win biggest. If the RAM is "swap space", there will be all sorts of overhead in copying it back and forth between swap and memory. If you have a chunk of RAM that cannot be made part of main memory, then by all means declare it swap space.