Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 26802
RFE: Don't force user to create swap partitions, or allow swap file
Last modified: 2007-03-26 23:40:44 EDT
There are situations where dedicating an entire partition to swap is not really the best way to install. Anaconda should give the option of not having swap at all, or, if it's going to force swap, at least give the option of putting it in a file on a mounted filesystem.
Noted as a future feature request.
Although I think these situations are pretty rare.
I don't think is pretty rare, bfox... anaconda forces me to create a swap partition even if I: - want to use rh7.1 as a desktop - have 256MB ram - want to use a *file* based swap /sergio ps: yes, I know a swap partition give me more performance. ps2: maybe rh should introduce a new "Desktop" category when installing
I don't see how the requirement to have a swap partition blocks fresh installation of rh 7.1. It seems that someone just doesn't want it. Thus, that someone can later reconfigure/reformat the system, or do whatever he wants with the swap partition. The purpose of installation is to get the system running with as little trouble as possible. It does not have to please someone with incredibble flexibility in the form of a hundred options, and annoy all others by making them spend too much time configuring.
i had (1)a system with 2 HD, one with Redhat Linux 7.1 (8GB disk having two partitions, c and d , as to dos) and the second one was the backup hd (15 GB FAT32) i intalled Linux onto the first HD first partition letting Linux create whatever it needs, swaps . fully automatically... then it installed itself sucessfully in the first try.. the second time i needed to intall some more packages which would take more time searching and installing in the Server version, so i decided to overwrite the existing Server version with the Workstation version of Linux.. so i let it go again full automatically.. it again installed itself sucessfully but with a fatal difference.. later i leraned that it formatted my backup HD instead of installing itself on to the existing Linux system... That was a true disaster !!!!!!!!! it could at least ask or could say "Overwrite existing Linux".... that was inacceptable bug of all bugs... i will no longer try any Linux version... :((((
If swapless isn't going to be an option, I'd be happy if the option to create a swapfile on the FS (see upgrade screens) were also available for new installs. Installing recent RH is really a pain on machines that also run Solaris and NT. Forcing me to change the partition table has me doing silly things like installing on a different machine and tarring the entire filesystem over to the NT boxes; first, anaconda has no problem trashing anything that looks like a swap partition, e.g. solaris slices, and then NT doesn't like some of the strange partition tables disk druid creates. It's pretty easy to break the NT loader by creating out-of-order partitions on the boot drive. (There are some machines where repartitioning and reinstalling everything else is not an option.) So much for interoperability. In any case, partitions aren't resizable without reinstalling and/or lots of pain, so I'd think swapfiles would be the preferred option, given that it really doesn't make any difference performance-wise. Anyway, those looking for a workaround might install RH5.x if your hardware is supported, then upgrade to 7.
I agree with this bug report ( I just logged on to make a similar request ). I want to create a swap-free installation. I just got around this by temporarily "lying" about the type another partition. Later, after turning swap off, I'll format the partition like I really want it. RedHat works great without a swap. Why do the installation scripts insist I have one? If the script would just SHUTUP and let me procede, everything would be fine. -Bryce (Note that the text mode install says "you must have at least one 150M partition to install". That's wrong. Because of this issue you must have two partitions.
done for next release.