Re: Best way to create a swap partition
> I tried using fdisk. Contrary to fdisk on x86/alpha I could not change
Don't - use mac-fdisk, or parted.
> the partition type of an existing partion. So I deleted an unused one
> and tried to recreate it. But I am never asked for a partition type, I
> always get a "Linux native". When I use "C" instead of "c" I can set a
> partition type, but there is no help on what I can choose here, fdisk
> simply accepts anything, it appears.
The 'C' sounds like mac-fdisk, but the 'Linux native' isn't the partition
type nor name - you got that from the last column in the partition
listing? That column will always read 'Linux native' for Unix partitions,
(unless their name happens to be 'swap').
The partition type/name thing is confusing, thanks Apple. The logic is as
follows: The partition type describes what the partition is supposed to be
used for - partition map, drivers, HFS or Unix data partitions. For Linux,
we hijacked the A/UX partition type (assuming MacOS knows not to touch
those). The partition type could be anything, perhaps, I've never tried
that (and I've been using mac-fdisk on m68k and ppc since its rewrite from
the MkLinux pdisk tool).
Having fixed the type of a Linux partition (Apple_UNIX_SVR2) we still need
to specify what particular use the partition is meant for. There's two
choices, basically: filesystem, or swap (or LVM, as it later turned out).
Currently, everything except 'swap' is interpreted as filesystem use,
tagged 'Linux native'. You can name the filesystem partitions anything you
like.
Who cares about these distinctions? Honestly, it really doesn't matter
except for the (old) installer. There's nothing wrong with using an
unused partition of type Apple_HFS or Apple_Free for swap. There's more
than one way to do it ...
> So: How do I create a swap partion on ppc?
Using 'c', and 'swap' for the name. Then, mkswap -V1 /dev/<whatever>.
Michael
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