In regard to: Re: Re: Tile Cache Size, Marc Lehmann said (at 1:05am on Nov...:
>On Mon, Nov 01, 1999 at 08:04:39PM -0600, Tim Mooney
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Wouldn't the situation be even worse, then, if we're going through the
>> filesystem and there's "average" fragmentation? You seem to be assuming that
>> the filesystem allocation will be contiguous (or at least close) on disk,
>> but can you really make that assumption?
>
>I donīt care for windows, if you wanted to hear that ;-> If the OS does
>not make this assumption a fact (in most cases) then all bets are off
>anyway.
I wasn't talking about windoze, and I don't care for it either. ;-)
All filesystems have the notion of fragmentation. Some of them *encourage*
it (UFS/BFFS, for example), and many of them *discourage* it, providing
tools to defragment, coalescing the pockets of free space into large chunks
of free space.
As far as I know, most Unix and Unix-like OSes will generally try give you
the space you're requesting as a contiguous chunk. In the case of files like
a (e.g.) 40 Meg swap-file for the gimp, that may not be possible, even for
a filesystem that is much less than 50% full. All it takes is "average"
fragmentation to ruin the OS' ability to give you a contiguous chunk.
This means, I think, that all bets *are* off, at least regarding the gimp's
ability to keep tiles "close" on-disk. The bigger the swap file, the less
likely it is that the gimp will be able to do this. That's why I asked
my original question.
Tim
--
Tim Mooney [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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