[Pc_Support] Swap on an NTFS partition? -- pre-allocated blocks

[Bryan J. Smith]

Darren Humphrey wrote:
> Problem is, the machines are all Windows XP and have NTFS partitions.
> Slax does support the newer ntfsmount that offers read-write support on NTFS,
> but I am having difficulty getting it to work.

Understand that kernel-space (module) NTFS filesystem support has only
2 modes:
1.  read-only
2.  modify-only -- no change in size/attributes (only "safe" way to
write to NTFS)

I assume you're trying to do #2, with a pre-allocated set of file blocks.
If not, you need to pre-allocate the blocks inside of XP itself.
Once you do that, you _should_ be able to use the blocks.

If you want to use user-space (Captive) NTFS filesystem support, it'll
be dog slow (really slow).

> So far I have tried:
> umount /mnt/hda2        (originally mounted readonly)
> ntfsmount /mnt/hda2    (now mounted read write)
> mkswap /mnt/hda2/pagefile.sys   (reports success)

> Any ideas?  I would really like to use a swap file so I don't have to permanently
> take 1-2Gb of every sales laptop just to run this app once in a while.

I _always_ create a 8-32GB FAT32 partition on _all_ NT5.x (200x/XP)
systems.  I highly recommend you do this from now on.  PartitionMagic
is always a Godsend, especially for just taking back the last 8-32GB
of a disk.

I used to create FAT32 as the C: (system**) drive and the boot**
drive/install would go on D:).  That was so I could recover the system
easier as well as dual-boot with MS-DOS 7.1+ (Win95OSR2+)

But now I create the FAT32 as D: (nothing special), and the NTFS is C:
and it provides both start-up functions (system** and boot**).

BTW, _never_ create a FAT32 C: drive that is over 32GB or you will
often have geometry issues -- especially in NT5.1SP2 (XPSP2).

**NOTE:  This terminology, which is Microsoft's, is ass-backwards.
"system" means where the bootstrap and NTLDR are at and must be BIOS
disk 80h (C:), although "active" is not required for NT (unlike DOS).
"boot" means where the NTKERNEL.EXE and \WINNT directory is at, which
can be on a completely different partition or even drive.  The
opposite makes far more sense, but I try to stick with MS'
terminology.