[ On Tue, April 16, 1996 at 08:13:32 (-0400), David Jones wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: Config File / Kernel Building
>
> Can anyone give me a REAL good reason why Unix users have to put up with this
> crap?  Why can't NetBSD do the following:
> 
> - Once booted off xxxa where xxx is some disk, if xxxb exists, make that
>   the initial swap space (with appropriate behavior if booting miniroot).
> - Once the user says "swapon xxyz", just do it!
> 
> I see no reason for the behavior of a user-initiated "swapon" to depend
> on what was configured.  About the only argument I can see for the current
> behavior is the off chance that someone has non-swap on xxxb.  Perhaps
> we can have a "swap superblock" that contains some signature that the kernel
> checks for before it will use a partition as swap?

I'll second that motion by an order of magnitude!

It drives me absolutely batty that I've got to build a new kernel just
to add some swap space, and if indeed I can't build a new kernel because
I don't have enough swap space initially available, then I'm hosed.

I still haven't figured out how to swap to a file, or even a vnode -- I
thought I had made all the right kernel changes to allow swap to a
vnode, but it still won't allow me to attach it, and I just gave up.  I
certainly need some such feature before I can finally ditch SunOS in my
production environments.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 443-1734			VE3TCP			robohack!woods
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets Of The Weird <woods@weird.com>