more on unix swap space problem

[Guy Harris]

>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.