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From: mkhaw@teknowledge-vaxc.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec,comp.unix.wizards,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Why doesn't Ultrix allow "a" partitions to shrink?
Message-ID: <13347@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 3-Jun-87 13:19:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: teknowle.13347
Posted: Wed Jun  3 13:19:44 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 6-Jun-87 04:01:20 EDT
References: <12963@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA> <903@apple.UUCP> <13263@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA> <912@apple.UUCP>
Reply-To: mkhaw@teknowledge-vaxc.UUCP (Michael Khaw)
Organization: Teknowledge, Inc., Palo Alto CA
Lines: 21
Keywords: Ultrix disk parition a only grows
Xref: utgpu comp.sys.dec:183 comp.unix.wizards:2361 comp.unix.questions:2364

In article <912@apple.UUCP> ems@apple.UUCP (Mike Smith) writes:

>Why don't you just do your swaping on the 'a' partition?  Have it 

Nope,  if I use 'a' for swapping then it doesn't have a filesystem on it,
therefore no superblock(s), therefore(?) no partition table.  (I already tried).

The Ultrix ra81 givens are:
- you MUST have an 'a' partition WITH a filesystem on it
- the 'a' partition must begin at sector 0 and cannot be made smaller
- the default size of the 'a' partition is (approx.) 7 Mbytes

But others have said that they overlap 'a' with other partitions and build
just a tiny filesystem on 'a'.  It IS a kludge, but it seems to be my only
option.

Mike Khaw
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