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From: sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.internals
Subject: Re: why different swapping modes on executables?
Message-ID: <1991Mar12.104352.23097@kithrup.COM>
Date: 12 Mar 91 10:43:52 GMT
References: <1991Mar12.012401.557@nowhere.uucp>
Organization: Kithrup Enterprises, Ltd.
Lines: 20

In article <1991Mar12.012401.557@nowhere.uucp> sking@nowhere.uucp (Steven King) writes:
>    While I think I understand what the difference is, I don't understand
> why the difference. Is there any advantage to one over the other? How
> does one, short of directly editing the binary, assign one or the other?
> ( the link editor doesn't offer any clues ) 

At one point, the linker would just willy-nilly put things back to back.
For example, text might end at 0x1231, and data would then begin at 0x1232.
When paging, you do *not* want to use old data.  Therefore, if you want to
page directly from disk, you arrange things such that everything is in a
decent arrangement (which is what your kernel would do for you when it
swapped pages to the swap device).

At least, that's how I understand it.

-- 
Sean Eric Fagan  | "I made the universe, but please don't blame me for it;
sef@kithrup.COM  |  I had a bellyache at the time."
-----------------+           -- The Turtle (Stephen King, _It_)
Any opinions expressed are my own, and generally unpopular with others.