Re: Further to my installation error
On Sunday 20 March 2016 07:47:02 Lisi Reisz wrote:
> On Sunday 20 March 2016 09:34:53 Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Sunday 20 March 2016 04:54:20 Adam Wilson wrote:
> > > On Fri, 18 Mar 2016 22:21:58 +0000
> > >
> > > Lisi Reisz <lisi.reisz@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > On Friday 18 March 2016 20:49:55 David Wright wrote:
> > > > > It's far more likely that you forgot to format the partition,
> > > > > if that's indeed what you wanted to do.
> > > >
> > > > No. I checked and double checked that the partitions on the
> > > > disk which I wanted to use for installation were all marked with
> > > > the F for format, and that nothing on the disk it had been told
> > > > to leave alone had an F. It kept wanting to format the spare
> > > > disk's swap, which I did not want.
> > >
> > > Why not? You wanted to carry over the swap created by a previous
> > > installation?
> >
> > Doing that, leaving a potentially dirty swap for a new install? No
> > sensible reason to do so, format that puppy.
>
> Am I the only person on this list who has ever wanted to install on
> one disk and leave another alone for some reason? Surely not!! I
> wanted to install on sda and leave sdb alone. So I told it not to use
> sdb. Not to format sdb. Not to touch sdb. Why? Because I didn't
> want sdb touched. I was not leaving a potentially dirty swap for a
> new install. I was telling the new install not to use the second
> disk. Sheesh. When I could see I would just have disconnected sdb.
> It would then have been left alone. OK.
>
> I regard that as a sensible reason.
>
> Lisi
The problem with that is that unless you edit fstab before the initial
reboot, (difficult to do) to remove the auto-found swap partition on
sdb, it will be found and mounted. But by then it likely has been
formatted anyway.
I think my point is that its a shrug, or should be.
If you want separate swaps because you are dual booting, that isolation
can be handled by a root edit session on /etc/fstab of each install.
And it may sound counterintuitive, but if the install on sda uses /swap
on /sdb, and the install on sdb used the swap on sda, the machine may be
noticeably faster when its actually useing swap. OTOH. I have never
done it. I just think its possible with no side effects other than a bit
faster when its using swap when booted to either install.
Unless your machines are really memory starved, swap s/b clean anyway if
its not been booted long. I'd also expect that doing, as root,
swapoff -aRETURN should result in a clean swap being found at the reboot
you are using to install. Then it wouldn't matter if it was
reformatted. I have never believed in having anything in swap actually
surviving a reboot anyway. At 12 days & change uptime, I show 58 megs of
swap in use. So this 3.16.0 kernel I'm running now is not particularly
swappy, but it also recognizes the 8Gb of dram in this machine.
OTOH, each machine seems to have a mind of its own. So my advice may be
for naught.
Linux it seems to me is entirely too eager to outwit the experienced
user. But my oar is too small to fit the oarlocks in this ship called
linux. Linus may have had a very good reason for making it do what it
does.
Cheers, Gene Heskett
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
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