[CentOS] why i can not put my swap files in /dev?

[Robert Heller]

At Tue, 06 Jul 2010 18:41:06 +0800 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote:

> 
> I tried to create some swap files in /dev directory for my desktop.
> the dd and mkswap were ok. but when I try to swapon it, i get this:
> 
> # swapon /dev/myswap
> swapon: /dev/myswap: Invalid argument
> 
> but when I mv the file to some other directory like /mnt or /, the 
> swapon works.
> 
> could sb. tell me why?

/dev is mounted from a *ramdisk* -- swapping to a RAM disk makes really
no sense.

With a modern (eg 2.6 kernel w/udev), /dev is created fresh at boot time
and only contains device node files, generally created on-the-fly by udevd.

> 

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