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 <mooney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 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 don´t 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 mooney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Information Technology Services (701) 231-1076 (Voice) Room 242-J1, IACC Building (701) 231-8541 (Fax) North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58105-5164
