Re: can't swapon second partition after swapoff, overwrite /dev/urandom, swapon

[Marc Shapiro <mshapiro_42@yahoo.com>]

diane mittnik wrote:
> I tried googling and checking docs but couldn't find anything relevant.
> I have 2 swap partitions, /dev/sda6, /dev/sda7.  1 GB of Ram
> I wanted to wipe my swap partitions, so I did swapoff /dev/sda7, then
> dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda7, then mkswap /dev/sda7, then swapon 
> /dev/sda7
> With swapon /dev/sda7, I get the following error message:
> # swapon /dev/sda
> swapon: /dev/sda7: Invalid argument
The following is from man mkswap:

      The  PSZ  parameter  specifies  the  page size to use. It is 
almost always
      unnecessary (even unwise) to specify it, but certain old libc 
versions lie
      about  the  page  size,  so  it is possible that mkswap gets it 
wrong. The
      symptom is that a subsequent swapon fails because  no  swap  
signature  is
      found. Typical values for PSZ are 4096 or 8192.

Is it possible that this is your problem?  This does not say what error 
swapon would give, but it certainly sounds like a possibility in this 
case.  Does anyone else know more about this situation?

--
Marc Shapiro
mshapiro_42@yahoo.com