From: seidl@midway.dcrt.nih.gov (Edward Seidl) Subject: Re: Swap partition != available swap space Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1993 02:33:38 GMT
In article <1993Jan28.170305.15436@cbfsb.cb.att.com> wto@cbnewsg.cb.att.com (William T. O Connell) writes:
>> [ wants 32Mb swap partition ]
>>
>
>No, it's not related to the kernel config question, thats referring
>to phy. RAM. - someone correct me if I'm wrong but, linux will use up
>to 16MB of swap space, even though in your case you allocated 32MBs.
>If you want to have more then 16MB of swap space you'll have to modify
>the kernel to support the larger swap space. Someone did post a while
>back that they got info from linus on how to modify the kernel to
>do this, I don't believe the change was that big of a deal.
>
Correct on all counts. The changes to the kernel are not major at all.
The only file that needed to be changed was linux/mm/swap.c. I also had
to modify mkswap a bit, as well as free (I only have the kernel version,
not the proc fs one). I've been running with 32Mb of swap for ~2 weeks
now...no problems so far. I sent the patches to Linus so that he could
verify that the changes are neither stupid nor dangerous. Considering that
2 kernel patches have been released since then makes me wonder :)
So far I've been loath to give the patches to anyone until I hear back from
Linus, or, better yet, he sticks the changes (or a better solution) into
the kernel. If anyone out there can't wait, I'd be willing to send them
the necessary patches with the understanding that they have been tested
on exactly one machine, and I make NO promises that catastrophe does not
await any who apply them to their machine. If enough people are interested,
I might put them on tsx-11, but I'd really rather wait until I hear
something from Linus.
>- Bill O'Connell
Ed Seidl