[Rule-list] Re: Swap brainstorm, and installing in 8M...

[Devon]

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On Sunday 24 February 2002 12:49 pm, Scott Hallock wrote:
> > I'm going to look into the possibility of getting some swap turned on
> > earlier. I did manage to use a floppy as swap. It was an interesting
> > experience, to say the least. ;)
> > However, to the best of my knowledge, the swap must be formated as
> > such. I don't believe a dos partition will do the trick.
>
> I'm assuming that the mkswap binary is available on the installation
> boot image.  Otherwise, mkswap couldn't happen from within anaconda,
> yes?  If mkswap is availble, all we have to do is ask that the user
> arrange for a partition identified as "Linux swap" exist beforehand.

mkswap is available, but it isn't as simple as that. I wish it were.
The device files are not created, and thus, not normally accessable until 
the installer has partitioned the disk(s).

I am currently testing an install in 8M of ram, using the 0.7.0 boot 
floppy and updates disk. So far so good. Slow, but it does appear to be 
working.

Here is what I did, if anyone feels like trying it:

I installed a second small harddrive. (Maxtor 546M) The reason for the 
second drive is that I haven't determined how the installer will handle 
swap running on the drive when it tries to partition it. I suspect I know 
the answer, but will try the single disk approach next. Anyway...

Boot and at the syslinux prompt, enter 'linux updates mem=8M'
When prompted for the updates disk, switch to <vt2> 
enter:
mknod /dev/hdb b 3 64
mknod /dev/hdb1 b 3 65
fdisk /dev/hdb
(partition, and set one partition as swap, write out the partition table)
mkswap /dev/hdb1
swapon /dev/hdb1

switch back to <vt1>, insert the updates disk, and continue normally.

Swap is enabled and is being used. The machine is currently thrashing 
pretty badly, but the install appears to be making headway. Video card, 
monitor and mouse have been detected, hoping to see install screens in 
the near future. :)

Free output loooks like:
        total   used    free    shared  buffers
Mem:    5948    5440    508     0       2560
Swap:   534200  4660    529540
Total   540148  10100   530048

Yes, I used the entire disk as swap for this test. I don't have a good 
reason, really. I'll do more testing if this attempt completes. It isn't 
going to set any speed records, I can tell you that already. ;)

- -D

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