From: parry@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au (Tom J Parry) Subject: Re: Sharing a swap partition: Linux and Windows? Date: Tue, 18 May 1993 13:49:43 GMT
Mark Evans (evansmp@uhura.aston.ac.uk) wrote:
> william E Davidsen (davidsen@ariel.crd.GE.COM) wrote:
> :
> : There's an easier way, which is known to work. Create a swap
> : partition, and use it as normal with Linux. When booting DOS, do a dos
> : format on that partition. Put your swap file in that partition, and make
> : it temporary. At the minor expense of the time to format the partition
> : on DOS boot, you use all access methods known to work.
> You could modify the Linux shutdown to put a DOS FAT on the partition,
> that is faster than running format.
Until Stephen Tweedie finishes the swap to a DOS file stuff, would it not
be feasible to have a partition dedicated to Windows swap. The swapfile
would be permanent and fill the partition. Hence the FAT for that partition
is fixed. Linux could use the area of the disk AFTER the FAT for swap space
with minimal loss of swap space.
The problem that arises (apart from the fact that Linux doesn't have
support to do this right now - and hence Stephen's solution may be here
sooner) is that Windows may not like what the swap file looks like when it
starts up. I would hope that there would be an option to win.com or a
separate utility somewhere to initialise the swapfile to some minimally
recognisable form, if windows insists on interpretting data in the swap
file at bootup. I'm not holding my breath.
Of course a small program to go in autoexec.bat or config.sys could always
lay down the root directory and FAT of the swapdrive with the swapfile in a
windows friendly state. No data can be lost here since it's only a
swapfile. Unless, of course, you run it on the wrong drive. What about
Norton and PcTools accidental format precautions? If you could save the
format recover file on another drive then you could simply unformat the
drive!
-- Tom J Parry. Your reality is a figment of my imagination.