Kernel Definition

[Daniel Klein]

In article <1423 at necis.UUCP>, jjp at necis.UUCP (Jeff Phillips) writes:
|> A friend of mine is writing a paper on balanced system approach.  In it he
|> makes the assertion that "...(the UNIX operating system is) too large to fit 
|> in system RAM all at once, therefore pieces of the operating system are swapped
|> between system RAM and disk, thereby generating even more disk I/O requests."

I believe that your friend is sadly mistaken.  Unless things have changed
radically in the past year or two, the kernel is wholly memory resident.
Some so-called "system" processes are swap/pageable in the same way that
"user" processes are.  Some examples are the FTP daemon, the RLOGIN daemon,
and so forth).  Even these are not true "system" processes.  "System"
processes (like the swapper and page daemon) are not swapped or paged (for
obvious reasons).
-- ============ -- =========== -- =========== -- =========== -- =========== --
"The only thing that separates us from the animals is superstition and
mindless rituals" (Latke)      Daniel Klein	CMU-SEI   +1 412/268-7791
						dvk at sei.cmu.edu