Re: shmem or swapfs? was: [Patch] make shm filesystem part configurable

Albert D. Cahalan (acahalan@cs.uml.edu)
Sat, 13 Jan 2001 15:14:19 -0500 (EST)


Christoph Rohland writes:

> I am quite open about naming, but "shm" is not appropriate any more
> since the fs does a lot more than shared memory. Solaris calles this
> "tmpfs" but I did not want to 'steal' their name and I also do not
> think that it's a very good name.

Admins already know what "tmpfs" means, so you should just call
your filesystem that. I know it isn't a pretty name, but in the
interest of reducing confusion, you should use the existing name.

Don't think of it as just "for /tmp". It is for temporary storage.
The name is a reminder that you shouldn't store archives in tmpfs.

Again for compatibility, Sun's size option would be useful.

-o size=111222333 Size in bytes, rounded up by page size.
-o size=111222k Size in kilobytes (base-2 or ISO standard?)
-o size=111m Size in megabytes (base-2 or ISO standard?)

I'd prefer k for ISO standard and K for base-2.
Of course m isn't millibytes, but that isn't horrible.
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/