swap

[Matt Graham]

On 2015-03-15 18:13, Michael Havens wrote:
> I was wondering why Linux uses a swap partition rather than a swap
> file. I mean I would think a swap file would be superior since a
> file's size can fluctuate whereas a partition is static.

Historical reasons and performance.  A partition is a contiguous area 
of disk, while a file can be a widely-scattered area of blocks.  The 
kernel can also access a partition directly, while accessing a file 
incurs unavoidable overhead of going through the filesystem kernel code. 
This overhead is (almost) invisible in modern high-powered systems with 
many G of RAM and CPUs >= 2 GHz.  When 128M of RAM and 400 MHz of CPU 
were what was available, people needed to be more concerned about 
performance.

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