[TriLUG] Disabling Windows swap space

[Jeremy P]

On Fri, 10 May 2002, Lisa C. Boyd wrote:

> I've looked at some documents online about setting up shared swap space 
> between Linux and Windows but most of the directions are after you have 
> Linux installed. Y'all say to disable Windows swap space before coming to 
> the install fest tomorrow so does that mean I just turn virtual memory off 
> totally? Or am I missing something? Most likely I'm not installing Linux on 
> the Windows drive, but wanted to be prepared in case that should change. I 
> should have a couple of extra HDs to load Linux on :) so I'm hoping not to 
> have to share the same drive.

Hi,

The comment about disabling Windows swap space only applies if you wanted
to compress your Windows partition to add a Linux partition on the same
drive.  The issue is that the Windows swapfile is usually unmoveable by
the defrag program, so it won't get moved to the beginning of the
partition, making partition-shrinking programs like FIPS unusable.  But
since you're bringing an extra hard drive or two, you don't need to worry
about that -- we can just install Linux on the second drive.

While it is possible to share swap/virtual memory space between Linux and
Windows, that's a different topic.  I haven't done that myself, and it's
probably not too important if you have a decent amount of hard drive space
and memory.

--Jeremy