> I'm wondering if I have my swap space set up properly (and the main
> partition for that matter), the reason being, I could still boot from
> the installation filesystem leftover on the swap partition even
> several days after the installation.  This seems to indicate that it
> is not using the swap partition as it surely would have been
> overwritten.

This seems like a reasonable inference, but it's not certain; it could
have swapped over fragments of the filesystem that didn't happen to hit
anything critical for booting.  I believe swap is *allocated* starting
at the beginning of the partition, but it is not necessarily *used*
starting from there.

> Also, I've done "continue" from the "db >" prompt after a trap and it
> dumps all over my root partition and scrambles the boot kernel
> necessitating a complete reinstall.

This sounds very much as though your swap overlays something more
important - which *could* also explain some of your other problems.

> My partitioning is set up with a 32 meg swap from 1st cyl to (+32
> megs), then the rest is my main partition from block (+32megs + next
> cyl boundary) to the end.  (I don't have the exact parameters handy)

> Should the swap be at the begining or end of the physical disk or
> does it matter?

I don't think it matters much, with an even vaguely recent system.
There was a time when your a partition had to begin at the beginning of
your disk or everything before it would be effectively read-only, but
that was quite a while ago, and if you're not getting "clean of page
xxxxx failed" messages, that's not your problem anyway.

Could you send (either to me or to the list) your /etc/fstab and what
disklabel reports for your disk partitioning?

					der Mouse

			       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
		     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B