On 06/09/07, James Hartley <jjhartley@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/6/07, Geert Hendrickx <ghen@telenet.be> wrote:
> > On Thu, Sep 06, 2007 at 12:09:39PM -0700, James Hartley wrote:
> > > 2.  If a swap partition is specified on a new disk, what needs to be
> > > done to notify the system that it is to split the existing swap across
> > > two disks?  ie.  I created two partitions on a new disk, swap &
> > > 4.2BSD.  After mounting the 4.2BSD partition, I saw no change in the
> > > amount of swap reported by top(1).
> >
> > You have to add the new swapspace in /etc/fstab.  See man fstab(5).
>
> Thanks, Geert & Chavdar both for replying.
>
> As for editing /etc/fstab, doesn't this require a reboot?

No, see my example. fstab makes sure everything is mounted upon
reboot, but you can start using it after editing immediately.

> What if a
> sizable USB drive is temporarily added to a system?

I have fstab entries with noauto, so when the drive is available, one
can mount the relevant partitions. The same could be achieved using
the automounter, which I use for mounting CDs and over NFS).

> If it has a swap
> partition, is there a way to use it without rebooting?

swapctl -d {the_original_swap_device}  # you have no swap now...
swapctl -A # add all sw devices in fstab
swapctl -l # list them

>
> Thanks.
>
> Jim
>
Chavdar