Subject: Re: Q: Possible to put SWAP in slice 0?

From: [email-masked] (Ruth Milner)
Date: Fri, 13 May 94 17:12:00 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Casper H.S. Dik) writes:
>
>Assuming for the sake of argument that ``slice 0/partition a'' equates all
>slices/partitions that start at cylinder 0, block 0, the answer
>to the original question differs on whether you swap on
>slice 0 or partition a.
>
>You can't swap on partition a (because you'd corrupt the label: block 0)

Just to complicate the issue :-) ...

Whether or not you can swap on the first partition on a disk - at least in
SunOS 4 using SCSI disks - seems to depend on whether this partition is 
actually called partition a/b/c etc. ... When I first arrived here, all the
Suns (only a dozen then) had been set up to swap on either partition "a" or 
(if using the whole disk for swap) partition "c", both starting at block 0. 
This worked just fine for several years, over OS versions 4.0.3 - 4.1 - 4.1.2.
But in a previous life I saw the label get overwritten when it was partition 
"b" that started at block 0 and was used for swap. I was quite startled when 
I discovered the configuration. :-)

So at least in SunOS 4, there appears to be some knowledge of partition "b"
being different from the others, built into the OS somewhere ...
-- 
Ruth Milner                          NRAO/VLA                  Socorro NM
Manager of Computing Systems    [email-masked]