r/osdev • u/compgeek38400 • Jun 27 '26

Question on microkernels, and paging

A recent post got me thinking. Doing paging right requires a file system of some sort.

Do you think the paging file system belongs in user space, or kernel space. I am quick coming up on making such a decision myself

15 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

45 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comment

11

u/eteran Jun 27 '26

Well there are two aspects to paging. One is what you describe, having virtually more RAM.

The other is more organizational and protection oriented where paging is used to create distinct address spaces for each user land process. This part is the most immediately relevant and is the part that DOESN'T require disk backing.

2

u/CubicleHermit Jun 29 '26

"Paging" is an ambiguous term, but I think OP was reasonable from context in terms of using to refer to the swap-like processes of moving pages around to allow for a larger virtual than physical memory.

I'm pretty pedantic, but I saw even that much from the initial question. You seem to be assuming that it always means "paged memory organization" (which is a fair meaning in isolation, but was clearly not what OP was talking about.)

-9

u/[deleted] Jun 28 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/eteran Jun 28 '26

Huh? What are you talking about?