Re: Swap support

[Harry Kalogirou <harkal@gmx.net>]

Την Δευ, 22-04-2002 στις 23:35, ο/η Riley Williams έγραψε:
> Hi Harry.
> 
> >> Would you mind if I tweaked the config system to allow this to be
> >> configured therein, making the entire configuration dependent on
> >> the CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL config variable?
> 
> > Yes make it dependent on CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL, as for the
> > configuration of the swap partition leave it as it is now,
> > since it is only for developers at the moment...
> 
> No problem. There's two thing that strike me though:
> 
>  1. Does it actually make sense to use a ramdisk as a swap drive?
 
For now it does only for debuging. Later if and when we have  ramdrives
that use memory after 1MB(on 286) it will make sense for more than
debuging.... 

>  2. If we're using a hard drive partition as a swap partition,
>     doesn't the kernel already know the size of that partition?

Yes it does and the swapper will use that info in the next versions. I
just hardcoded in for now since the ramdisk driver does not inform about
the size of the drive and I only use the ramdisk for debuging.....

> If (2) is true, then the extents field is not one needing configuration
> anyway as we can just grab the value the kernel has already determined
> earlier in the boot process. At least, I hope it has, as it doesn't make
> sense for the swap code to be enabled prior to our autoprobing for the
> hard drive partition sizes.
> 
> >> Also, does it use any particular format for the swap partition?
> 
> > There is no need to format the block device (partition) to be used...
> 
> True, but it misses what I was asking. Basically, are we emulating the
> Linux swap code in this respect, in that we store a swap signature at
> the start of the swap partition, or are we just using the partition raw?
 
We are using the partition _raw_. No format is needed(mkswap).

Harry


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