Simple question: Is there anything architecture-specific about"mkswap"?
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From: John Reiser on 2 Aug 2010 21:48 > Is there anything architecture-specific about "mkswap"? Read The Fine Manual page: give the command "man mkswap" to a shell program in a terminal session. There you will see that mkswap depends on the native page size of the hardware, usually 4KiB or 8KiB. --
From: Kenny McCormack on 2 Aug 2010 21:58 In article <9padncet96Ya6MrRRVn_vwA(a)giganews.com>, John Reiser <jreiserfl(a)comcast.net> wrote: >> Is there anything architecture-specific about "mkswap"? > >Read The Fine Manual page: give the command "man mkswap" to a shell program So, what's the answer to the question? -- Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. - John Kenneth Galbraith -
From: Michael Black on 2 Aug 2010 22:11 On Tue, 3 Aug 2010, Kenny McCormack wrote: > Is there anything architecture-specific about "mkswap"? > > That is, is there anything wrong with using "mkswap" on a machine > running Linux on one architecture (say, i386) to create a swap partition > on a device, then using that device for swap under Linux running on > another architecture (say, ARM). I.e., assume that, for whatever > reason, "mkswap" does not exist on the target architecture. > > I assume the answer is "no", but thought I'd check - because one never > knows... I'd assume that "mkswap" is pretty much analogous to "mke2fs", > and obviously that's not architecture-specific. > I don't see why it would be specific. All you are doing is partitioning a section of hard drive for swap and indicating it is for swap. It's not as if you then continue to format the space, which then might cause conflict. It's just a space, the operating system uses and does whatever with that space when it needs it. Note that I could multiple boot and have only one swap space for both variants of Linux, and if I booted with one, it wouldn't care one bit that I'd been using the swap partition with the other distribution. In other words, it expects a "blank" partition, and acts accordingly, and thus it can't expect anything to be on that partition, which means whatever it needs for that parition, it will provide. Michael
From: Robert Riches on 3 Aug 2010 00:17 On 2010-08-03, John Reiser <jreiserfl(a)comcast.net> wrote: >> Is there anything architecture-specific about "mkswap"? > > Read The Fine Manual page: give the command "man mkswap" to a shell program > in a terminal session. There you will see that mkswap depends on the native > page size of the hardware, usually 4KiB or 8KiB. It appears some didn't understand that the page size _CAN_ be architecture specific. Because mkswap depends on page size, mkswap _CAN_ therefore be architecture specific. Now, whether i386 and x86_64 have different page size, I don't happen to know. All my home hardware is 32-bit (but hopefully for not too much longer). -- Robert Riches spamtrap42(a)jacob21819.net (Yes, that is one of my email addresses.)
From: John Reiser on 3 Aug 2010 10:01
>>> Is there anything architecture-specific about "mkswap"? >> Read The Fine Manual page: give the command "man mkswap" to a shell program > So, what's the answer to the question? The answer to the question is, "Yes." This answer is contained directly in the *next* sentence, which you snipped: There you will see that mkswap depends on the native page size of the hardware, usually 4KiB or 8KiB. Note the words, "mkswap depends on the native page size". That dependency is architecture-specific. -- |