On Wed, Dec 01, 1999 at 04:29:31PM -0500, John Aldrich wrote:
-> On Wed, 01 Dec 1999, you wrote:
-> > Arrg!
-> >
-> > Under RH 5.2 I tried that manually, with:
-> >
-> > # mkfs /dev/sda7
-> >
-> > and it put an ext2fs file system on the partition. I then tried:
-> >
-> > # mkfs -t swap /dev/sda7
-> > mkfs.swap: No such file or directory
-> >
-> > So I don't think it will will work when I reboot to L-M.
-> >
-> Try 'mkswap /dev/sda7' and see if that works... :-)
-> John
I got a lot further with this problem with John's advice, and that of
several others who responded similarly. Thank you all.
I also read the man page (GASP! :-) which told me what went on
there. There are two formats for a swap partition or file. I conjecture
that RH 5.2 only knew about the older one, whihc has a maximum size of 128
MB. The newer format is expandable, and goes, depending on your processor,
to 2GB or more. With the following added to rc.sysinit, I now get the
appropriate partition size for each OS.
# Start up swapping.
# begin swapping hack
# The problem is that RH 5.2 and Mandrake Linux 6.1 don't quite cooperate
# correctly. If I run 'mkswap /dev/sda7' from RH 5.2, I get a 128Mb swap
# partition both OSs can use. If I run it from LM 6.1, I get a 258 MB swap
# partition that only LM 6.1 can use. So I run it from each OS just before
# booting. Take this out when I abandon RH 5.2. 1999 12 02
action "Making swap space conform" /sbin/mkswap /dev/sda7
# end swapping hack
action "Activating swap partitions" swapon -a
Of course, since I only have 64 MB of physical memory, I now have enough
swap space to get myself into serious swap thrashing, something greatly to
be avoided. I'll just have to be careful.
Since ML will use the older format, I could leave the swap space in the
old format, and limit myself to 128 MB. That is the cheapscape way out. Or
I could buy more RAM, which was the idea when I set up such a huge swap
partition way back when.
--
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