Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wasatch!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: more on unix swap space problem
Message-ID: <1561@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 4 May 89 08:11:08 GMT
References: <171@larry.sal.wisc.edu> <17245@mimsy.UUCP> <2760@buengc.BU.EDU>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 17

>My sysadmin (the fella sitting to my left) says that the swap space is
>protected in such a way that an overlarge set of /usr/adm files won't
>affect it.  I was attributing the problem to the fact that we've allowed
>/usr/adm/acct to hit 17meg.  He says they're unrelated.  I don't buy it.

Uh, well, it depends on what flavor of UNIX you're running, but if your
swap space is on a disk partition of its own, he's right.  If your
system swaps to/from plain files on the same partition that contains
"/usr/adm", they could be related.

Most UNIXes tend, when swapping to a local disk, to swap to a "raw"
partition, since that's what the original AT&T version did.  Apollo's
isn't derived from AT&T's version at that level, and I think it
pages/swaps to/from plain files; I think the same may be true of Mach. 
Diskless machines running SunOS 4.x can page/swap to an NFS file; others
may have modified AT&T-derived UNIXes to page/swap to local or
over-the-wire files as well.