Date: Mon, 13 Oct 1997 08:47:14 +0200 From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) To: freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.ORG Cc: volf@oasis.IAEhv.nl Subject: Re: bin/4303 Message-ID: <19971013084714.MU25376@uriah.heep.sax.de> In-Reply-To: <199710122354.JAA13707@godzilla.zeta.org.au>; from Bruce Evans on Oct 13, 1997 09:54:49 %2B1000 References: <199710122354.JAA13707@godzilla.zeta.org.au>
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As Bruce Evans wrote: > >any device that was opened by the time the dump happens. > > Then it would be impossible to dump to (active) swap devices. Swap devices You're right. > No, such devices are very special, although swap devices are not. > Someone broke the minor numbering convention for floppies and and cdroms, > but drivers for these disk devices and all tape devices won't have a > dump routine, so dumpon on them will fail. The partition `b' convention was just this, a convention. The only place where it was bogusly enforced was the dump code. I'm really interested in a dump routine for tape drives, too. I think the first 64 KB of a swap partition aren't used at all. So couldn't we put a `magic' there once swapon has activated swapping on it, something that would be totally different in a live filesystem? This might be a better indication for a swap partition than the test for some non-documented (albeit conventionally used) bits in a minor number. Tape drives need different treatment anyway (like prompting the operator for a medium). -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)
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