> linux will write dirty pages of cache to disk after a little bit (the > default is something like 5 seconds) so that it can throw those pages > away without having to write to disk if it needs to later (and to get > the data onto permanent media so that it will survive a crash)
I don't understand - In my understanding, a dirty page is when you're using write-back caching, and some process told the OS "write this to the file," and the OS said "Ok it's done" even though the disk write hasn't occurred yet... So why would the OS ever choose to write that to disk in the swap space instead of just writing it to disk where it belongs? If the disk is available to write to the swap, doesn't that imply it's available to write to the final destination? Perhaps not, if the destination is on separate storage. Is that the whole point? _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list [email protected] http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
