[rhelv6-beta-list] My first experiences with RHEL6 beta

[James Findley]

On 06/15/2010 02:20 PM, Chris Adams wrote:
> Once upon a time, James Findley<james.findley at trans-axion.net>  said:
>> There is a (small) overhead for using file-based storage as opposed to
>> volume based storage,
>
> The only differences is at "swapon", when the file blocks are mapped.
> Once that is done, performance is identical (because access is
> identical).

Not entirely.  swap files can be non-contiguous (and are moderately 
likely to be so, if large) - swap volumes will only be so if you try 
really hard to screw up your system.
There are filesystem overheads, too.
I'm not quite sure why you think access is identical - it's a very 
different process to write N blocks to an on-disk file compared to 
writing those N blocks to a swap partition.

You can argue back and forth how much real world difference they make, 
but to say performance is identical is not correct.

-James