Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 124434
Install does not support swap file configuration
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:10:43 EST
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040510 Description of problem: On performing a new install I wanted to configure a swap file instead of a swap partition. A swap file is more flexible and convenient to use than a swap partition, since you can reconfigure it later if required, unlike a swap partition which has fixed size determined by the disk partitioning. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): anaconda-10.0-5 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Perform new install. 2.Manually partition disk and do not create a swap partition. 3. Actual Results: A warning is given: "You have not specified a swap partition. " "Although not strictly required in all cases, " "it will significantly improve performance for " "most installations." I think this statement is incorrect for the 2.6 kernel - a system with a swap file should perform just as well as a system with a swap partition. You should also be able to run Linux without a swap file or partition if you wish (and have a reasonable amount of memory). Linux did not install, the system rebooted and reported a grub error. Expected Results: To be given the option to create a swap file (or have a swap file created automatically). Additional info:
Running without any swap does have somewhat detrimental effects, hence the warning. Adding support for creating swap files is non-ideal from a UI perspective and thus isn't going to happen in the near to medium term.
Reopening as an RFE, following: http://blog.printf.net/articles/2006/03/27/swap-files-vs-swap-partitions
There are still reasons not to do swap files (including swsusp, which is even mentioned there :-) and the UI for doing them would still be pretty sub-par