Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ukma!rutgers!cmcl2!polyof!john
From: john@polyof.UUCP ( John Buck )
Newsgroups: comp.sys.att,u3b.tech
Subject: Re: Is the sysdump partition *really* needed on a 3B2/600?
Summary: Bad news
Message-ID: <448@polyof.UUCP>
Date: 7 Mar 89 20:25:00 GMT
References: <1068@vsi.COM>
Distribution: comp
Organization: Polytechnic University, Farmingdale NY
Lines: 22

In article <1068@vsi.COM>, friedl@vsi.COM (Stephen J. Friedl) writes:
>      Does anybody out there know if dropping the sysdump partition
> on a 3B2/600 is A Bad Thing?  We have no need or desire to analyze
> any crash dumps, so we've been reclaiming the space when we
> repartition.  Are we shooting ourselves in the foot?


I'd be carefull (very very careful) about doing this.  If you system
should crash, by default it writes its crash/dump info to the
dump partition. (partition 3 maybe? i forget off hand)... If you went
and put a filesystem there, it will go ahead and scribble Unix
dumpings over it.  We had this happen on our 3b15.  You won't notice
the problem until you go to reboot, at which point you will get
TONS of fsck errors.

I believe that you can set DUMPDEV in /etc/master.d (don't hold me to it),
to point to some safe place... tape drive, floppy drive maybe? nodev?

Be carefull about your hard disks though...

john@polyof.poly.edu
trixie!polyof!john