Re: Swap partition and fdisk

["Susan G. Kleinmann" <sgk@sgk.tiac.net>]

Hi --
You asked:
> I have got 16MB of RAM on my machine. Could someone tell me if it would
> still be necessary for me to create a Linux swap partition. 
If you will be using memory-hungry applications (like X or httpd), then
you'll definitely need some swap space.  A few tens of MBytes would be
a safe bet.

> Also, would
> Linux fdisk wipe out my DOS partition even if I only want to create one
> Linux partition w/ Linux fdisk and not mess up w/ DOS partition using
> Linux fdisk. Thanks.
I'm not quite sure what you mean here.  If your disk already has 1 partition
on it that uses the entire disk, then the only way to wedge a Linux 
partition onto it is to use a utility like FIPS (in the tools directory
at any Debian mirror) to make your DOS parition smaller.  Then you can 
repartition whatever is left over into 3 primary partitions (or more
if you want to use extended and logical partitons).  One of those partitions
could be your swap space.

Good luck,
Susan Kleinmann