[Rule-list] Re: Swap Brainstorm

[Martin Stricker]

Devon wrote:

> On Friday 22 February 2002 11:53 am, Scott Hallock wrote:

> I put a floppy in another machine, ran fdisk and created a partition,
> set it as swap, and ran mkswap /dev/fd0. Then, I put the disk in the
> floppy drive of the test machine as soon as it was done reading the
> anaconda updates. Switched to VT2 and entered 'swapon /dev/fd0'
> While I was at it, I removed the reiserfs and the raid modules as
> well.
> 
> I didn't really expect it to work. I just thought it might be
> something to try.

Argh! I should have thought of this myself! I'll try it, but not with my
floppy but with the still present swap partition from my last RULE
install! I just wonder what happens after partitioning the disk, when
anaconda tries to mkswap/swapon the just partitioned swap space... Maybe
adding an if swap already enabled don't try to use more swap to the
anaconda modifications will sort this out?

> I've added a second drive (set up as swap in advance on another
> machine) to the test machine. I just need to find a way to access it
> before the installer gets to the disk partitioning. Doing the same on
> a single disk would be good too, but probably more complicated. It'll
> be a good project for tomorrow if I get time.

I'll try the single disk version right after sending these mails. To
access the second disk, does VT2 provide mknod? If not, the installer at
some point *does* scan the disks (it's on VT3 IIRC), maybe the're
accessible afterwards? Again at some place anaconda *does* mknod the
newly created partitions. Maybe you can use that code earlier?

> It's not ready for prime time, nor is it for the faint of heart, but
> there you have it:
> Red Hat Linux 7.2 installed in 10M of RAM. :)

You went further than me: Install on 11 MB without swap failed (I
guess), see my test review.

Best regards,
Martin Stricker
-- 
Homepage: http://www.martin-stricker.de/
Red Hat Linux for low memory: http://www.freesoftware.fsf.org/rule/
Registered Linux user #210635: http://counter.li.org/

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