RE: [TCLUG:1704] swap partition question

[Andrew McCulloh <mcculloh@2z.net>]

>>>>> "Neal" == Neal Tovsen <ntovsen@piper.hamline.edu> writes:

    Neal> As I recall, you are correct in that you don't *have* to
    Neal> reboot after changing partition info with fdisk, but the
    Neal> manuals for both RedHat and Slackware (as well as the
    Neal> prompts from fdisk, I think) will tell you that it is still
    Neal> a good idea. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure why they
    Neal> suggest that, but I can generally spare an extra 2 minutes
    Neal> rebooting even on my slowest 486 to remove any risk.


This was a symptom of old versions of fdisk, the installation programs 
needed to reboot to ensure that the kernel was using the new partition 
table. Newer versions (i.e. ones released within the past 3 years)
update the kernel partition table correctly. But you are of course
correct, the best way to ensure that a kernel has noticed a newly
partitioned drive is to watch it fly by in the boot up messages...

Andrew