On Sun, 14 Jan 1996, der Mouse wrote:

> I think I know what happened here: swapping uses _all_ of the swap
> partition, whereas an FFS filesystem does not use the first 8K of its
> partition, reserving it for boot space on root filesystems and
> everywhere else for consistency.
> 
> So when you put swap at offset 0, you ended up swapping all over your
> disk label (and possibly boot blocks, depending).

Well, no. I would write the disk label, but I couldn't even dd the
miniroot on to the swap FS; I got a `filesystem is read-only' error,
or something along those lines.

> Try putting swap at the smallest offset you can (above 8K, that is),
> which since this is a boot pack and therefore uses a SunOS disk label
> means one cylinder.  (Or at least one cylinder according to the
> geometry information in the label, which in my experience does not have
> to match the actual geometry of the disk.)

Anyway, it did occur to me starting swap at cylinder 0 might tromp
on the boot blocks, so I tried starting it on cylinder 1, but with
the same result.

> > De gustibus, aut bene aut nihil.
> 
> "Of taste, either well or not at all" - are you trying to say taste is
> dead, or something?

Oh dear, now I have to explain this again. :-)

It's a humourous misquote that I stole from a character in Chekhov's
_The Seagull_. There are a couple of popular Latin sayings. _De
gustibus, non disputandum est_ (Cicero, I think) is `There's no
arguing taste' (not that I necessarially agree with that). _De
mortiis, aut bene aut nihil_ is generally translated as, "Of the
dead speak well or not at all." The character in _The Seagull_
conflates the two, producing _De Gustibus, aut bene aut nihil,_
which could conceivably be translated as "Taste: you got it or you
don't." :-)

cjs

Curt Sampson    curt@portal.ca		Info at http://www.portal.ca/
Internet Portal Services, Inc.	
Vancouver, BC   (604) 257-9400		De gustibus, aut bene aut nihil.