Baslinux mailing list

[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

On Fri, 16 Jul 2004, James Miller wrote:

> On Fri, 16 Jul 2004, Sindi Keesan wrote:
> 
> > Why does uClibc provide kernel 2.4 headers?  What are they used for?
> 
> This is the uClibc Debian system they provide for download there, right?
> If so, then I think kernel headers are provided for compiling programs
> that may need access to kernel headers.  The VMWare I run on my newer
> computer, for example, needs access to kernel headers to compile.  The
> uClibc Debian they offer is, after all, primarily for developers who may
> want to try building programs using uClibc to see if/how they work.

If Basiclinux is going to change to a new library and needs to get add-ons 
from Debian instead of Slackware, would it be BL4 instead of BL3?
I find it rather confusing to get hold of Debian packages.

> 
> > Where would I notice the improvement if I do add swap space?  Would
> > previously used programs load faster, or the compiler run faster?
> 
> I think he's recommending swap for situations in which your computer might
> run out of physical memory, not necessarily to improve performance.  Sort
> of a safety valvwe scenario, as i understand it.  Should you run out of
> physical memory, your system will become unstable and crash.  You risk
> losing data in such cases, and maybe even risk fatally damaging your Linux
> installation.
 > > James


Now I remember - I tried to install a large package (kernel source code
needed to compile kernel modules) and it crashed and I needed to run
e2fsk, which might have been prevented if i had a swap partition twice the
size of my RAM (which is 82MB in that computer).

But I don't want to sacrifice an entire partition to swap partition. I
have one Win98 FAT32, one FAT16 DOS, one BL2 and one spare which I was
going to use for BL3.  The hard drive is 16G.  I suppose I could add a
second drive for swap partition but then I would need to add a power
connector for it.  Can someone explain how to make a swap file on an
existing partition, and can it be on the FAT32 or FAT16 or BL2 partition,
for use by both BL2 and BL3?


Sindi