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From: rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: A few minor prob left...
Message-ID: <53614@brunix.UUCP>
Date: 17 Oct 90 21:28:24 GMT
References: <9102@milton.u.washington.edu> <1990Oct15.050058.27579@ccng.waterloo.edu>
Sender: news@brunix.UUCP
Reply-To: rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony)
Organization: Brown Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 59

In article <1990Oct15.050058.27579@ccng.waterloo.edu>, tgoldtho@ccng.waterloo.edu (Thomas A. Goldthorpe) writes:
|> In article <9102@milton.u.washington.edu> cyliao@hardy.acs.washington.edu (Chun-Yao Liao) writes:
|> >
|> >	/usr/etc/mach-swapon: swapping on /Candy/vm/swapfile
|> >		(this line is all right)
|> >	mach_swapon : mach_swapon failed : error 0
|> >	^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
|> 
|> You are not supposed to modify the rc scripts or the file
|> /etc/swaptab to mount a disk for the swapfile.  See below for
|> quick details and what to do: 

CORRECT


|> On start up, the rc script checks all disk labels.  When it finds one that
|> says 'swapdisk', it checks the fstab file for an entry with 'swapdisk' in it.
|> If it finds the entry, it knows which partition to mount from that entry
|> to /private.  The script itself mounts the partition and then creates the
|> file /private/swapdisk/vm/swapfile (I'm not on a NeXT at the moment, and
|> my memory is not the greatest for names, hence that path may be slightly
|> wrong).  Anyway, it also links /tmp into that mounted disk at the same
|> point then continues on.  The explicit mount in the rc script is OK, since
|> the fstab entry specifies the partition shouldn't be mounted via normal
|> standards.  In summary, all you need to do is specify the label on the
|> disk with the partition to mount is 'swapdisk', and that an entry which
|> won't mount the disk (but has the correct info for the partition and the
|> name swapdisk) appears in /etc/fstab.  (Note, /etc/fstab is really a link
|> with /private/etc/fstab, just like most other things :-)

Actually he should do the following:
a) As NeXT has a swapfile and not a swap disk, the second partition should NOT
be used as swappartition at all. The point of having a swapfile is that it 
can grow and shrink (after a reboot) according to the demand and within the
bounds of the size of the filesystem. By using a swap partition, you get rid
of this advantage. The whole thing with the swapdisk-label was invented for
OD-only systems with the 40MB drive to speed up swapping.
b) The second partition you usually find on bigger NeXT hard drives is there
to mount network clients. If you have a standalone system, get rid of it and
make your main file system bigger. This saves a lot of trouble with allocating
files to filesytems and such 
c) Don't modify the scripts written by NeXT. They do everything automatically.
They look for a swapdisk, and if they don't find it, create the standard swap
file we want to have.

Ronald
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"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
unreasonable man."  Bernhard Shaw | rca@cs.brown.edu or antony@browncog.bitnet
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