On Thu, Sep 08, 2005 at 10:32:10PM +0900, Dave Gutteridge enlightened us:
I've tried to create a Linux swap file, but when I run fdisk, it looks like this: Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hdb1 * 1 3644 29270398+ 83 Linux /dev/hdb2 3645 3737 747022+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA) /dev/hdb5 3645 3737 746991 82 Linux swap
Why is this W95 partition existing in the same place as my Linux swap? I would have thought they'd be incompatible. Can my Linux OS use this Linux swap?
Does this need cleaning up, and if so how?
It looks like it is some sort of extended partition. DOS disklabels can only have 4 partitions (primary), so to get around that you can create a primary partition as type extended, which can contain more partitions (up to 12, I think).
On my system, the extended partition is type 5, on yours it's type f. I'm not sure it's hurting anything, but to be on the safe side, I'd probably delete partitions 5 and 2, and just create a primary partition of type 82 (Linux swap).
In a related note, does your system have no other swap enabled at all? That could explain your yum-lockup problems. Yum is very memory intensive, if you starve it and it has no swap to go to, it probably will lock up. :-)
Matt