Date: Wed, 08 Jul 1998 17:59:51 -0500 From: David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net> To: Stefan Eggers <seggers@semyam.dinoco.de> Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net> Subject: Re: Someone working on swapoff? Message-ID: <199807082259.RAA02989@nospam.hiwaay.net> In-Reply-To: Message from Stefan Eggers <seggers@semyam.dinoco.de> of "Wed, 08 Jul 1998 08:31:38 %2B0200." <199807080631.IAA01081@semyam.dinoco.de>
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Stefan Eggers writes:
> > system, but would it be breaking sacred tradition to merge swapon and
> > the future swapoff into one "swap" management utility? The unified
> > utility could do swapon tasks if linked to the name "swapon" and
> > swapoff tasks if its named "swapoff".
>
> I think deciding on the name how to behave is not that good an idea
> in the first place. Besides this: How long would the swapoff in user
> land be? About 50 lines or less I'd guess. Merging is not worth
> any effort as it does save nothing in C code lines but adds more code
> to do the check the program name and call the corresponding code.
>
> What would then be worth talking about is replacing swapon with a new
> command for swap management. But that can wait till there is any need
> for this i.e. the kernel support for swapoff or priorities or something
> like that is at least nearly finished! For that such a merger might be
> worthwhile as the swapon functionalty would be in the new command
> already and one would have to support swapon for compatibility at least
> for a while. That's like pstat and swapinfo.
That's the other one to merge into swap(1), swapinfo/pstat(1).
Agree that its too early to decide on a name, the functionality is
needed first. But didn't think it was too early to start thinking about
the name. But mostly I'm thinking about how it gets used. Bouncing
between SGI Irix, Sun Solaris, and FreeBSD, swap, swapon, and swapinfo
are commands residing in the cobweb corners of my brain as they are
generally not used until there is a problem. Often the wrong one comes
to the top when needed, resulting in a session of, "man -k swap",
hunting for the right one.
In the advent of a functioning swapoff, we should consider bringing the
highest level of swap management into conformity with the other Un*x's.
pstat is moderatly complex:
n4hhe: {801} wc -l /usr/src/usr.sbin/pstat/pstat.c
1191 /usr/src/usr.sbin/pstat/pstat.c
n4hhe: {802}
--
David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@nospam.hiwaay.net
=====================================================================
The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its
capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system.
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