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Date:      Tue, 12 Jan 1999 07:16:16 -0500 (EST)
From:      tom@tomqnx.com (Tom Torrance at home)
To:        culverk@wam.umd.edu (Kenneth Wayne Culver)
Cc:        current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: SOFTUPDATES question
Message-ID:  <m1002k4-000I0SC@TomQNX.tomqnx.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.3.95q.990111161048.12894D-100000@rac9.wam.umd.edu> from Kenneth Wayne Culver at "Jan 11, 1999  4:13:42 pm"

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> > What are the pros and cons of defining an extra swapfile that
> > resides on a partition where SOFTUPDATES are enabled?
> > 
> > Please do a group reply, as I am not registered for 'questions' list.
> > 
> > Regards,
> > Tom
> Well, SOFTUPDATES are just a way of speeding things up. . Especially if
> you have a slower hard drive. I personally havn't ever done this with a
> swapfile, but I'm sure that swap writes would be improved much. Basically
> what softupdates allows is async writes to a filesystem without the risks. 

I'm not so sure - essentially softupdates updates in memory and drags its
feet a lot before writing to the actual disk. A swap file on the other
hand wants its data written immediately to free up the associated memory.
I have a feeling that the softupdates usage would actually increase
memory usage, thereby increasing the swap file utilization - a vicious
circle.

Anyone else have a better feel for this?

Tom

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