Re: Ideas for memory management hackers (2)
Evan Jeffrey (ejeffrey@utrek.ml.org)
Sun, 16 Nov 1997 18:00:15 -0600
>> From: Evan Jeffrey <ejeffrey@utrek.ml.org>
>...
>> I think it would be better to create a "new" swapfile type for > 128 (or
>> 512) MB swap areas, where the swap area signature (SWAP-SPACE ?) would be
>> replaced by something like "NEW-SWAPXX" where XX is a short int indicating
>> the number of bitmap blocks at the beginning of this swap area. This give
>> us an ~8 TB theoretical limit, which is pretty big.
>
> Theorethically nice, but I am such a person who has a habit
> of jumping back and forth between radically different kernel
> versions (2.0.x and 2.1.x!), and therefore I do prefer methods
> that don't require me do radical operations at system boot;
> like "mkswap" at each boot on which even the "mkswap" should
> recognize what the system understands at the moment...
Just have mkswap make swap areas < 128 MB in the old style, and swap areas >
128 MB in the new style. Then you can only use > 128 MB swap partitions if
you use exclusively supporting kernels, but... it is a cleaner solution in
general. Then, the new kernels would recognize both new and old style swap
areas.
Evan