more on unix swap space problem

[Chris Torek]

In article <2760 at buengc.BU.EDU> bph at buengc.BU.EDU (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
>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.

He is correct.  Swap space is allocated only as backing store for
processes.  It is completely unaffected by file sizes (although file
sizes may affect the amount of memory allocated by programs reading
or writing those files).

Under some systems (SunOS 4.x and Mach), you can swap on ordinary
files, so if you run out of VM, you can make a big file and add it
to the backing store pool.
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris at mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris