Swap space
 

I have installed Windows XP and Redhat Linux on my system. I alloted a whopping 1 GB as swap space for the Linux OS. But I found out that the Linux OS is using a max 200-300 MB of the swap space.

Is there any method or software thru which I can allow the Windows OS to use the same 1 GB as its swap space... so that the swap space is shared betwwn the two OSes?

Thank you....

Much to my surprise, it seems like it is possible...

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Swap-Space.html

Hey,
What if the swap partition is FAT32? I also have the similar problem... IS it true that Linux doesnt use more than 128 MB as swap space?

The swap space used depends on the ram you have. You have a lot of ram, so may not need much swap. It also depends on whether you use stuff that will take up alot of ram. You probably won't be able to use regular Linux swap partitions for sharing between the two os's, so the partition will probably have to be FAT32.

But how wud I make a FAT32 partition shareable between the two OSes?

Make a FAT32 partition, and prepare it in Windows for swap. Linux can read/write to FAT32, so that isn't a problem for Linux. Prepare the partition for swap by formatting it in Windows and telling it to put the swap file there. Then look at this for how to use this file in Linux:
http://www.slackware.com/faq/do_faq.php?faq=distro#11

Not anymore. That used to be the maximum with 2.0 kernels. Nowadays the kernel can handle up to 2GB swap partitions (and you can assign up to 32 separate swap partitions). In practice Linux usually doesn't need that much. If you have 256MB or more RAM you would have enough using 256MB swap for most uses. Read man mkswap for more information.

Thanx aaa but I dont know what UMSDOS is... I have a system WinXP Pro and RedHat Linux 9. How shud I go on abt it?

UMSDOS is the msdos (FAT16) filesystem expanded for Linux support. The instructions are for using the Windows swap file in the windows folder. I'm suggesting that you create a FAT filesystem, tell Windows to create a permanent swapfile on it, then let Linux use that file too. You 'format' the file for swap & use it, and you need a script to do this automatically. The same commands used in Slack should work in RH, it's where you put them that's different. Take a look at the previously mentioned howto ( http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Swap-Space-6.html#ss6.4 ) for info on how to get RH to do the needed stuff on startup.