Swap Space Mini HOWTO
by H. Peter Anvin
Copyright © 1994, 1995 H. Peter Anvin
VERSION: 1.3 Date: 19 Jun 1995
This Linux Mini-HOWTO describes how to share your Linux swap partition
with Windows.
Modifications by Rahul U. Joshi Date: 26 Nov 1999
- Added Windows 95/98 specific details.
- Added Red hat Linux specific details.
- Modified the msinfo program.
- Added sections 5 to 10.
- Split up the swap initalization and halt into two shell scripts.
- Modified the scripts to handle signature verification more than once.
- Added details about new type swap areas.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. What you need
3. Procedure
3.1 Turn off swapping and create a DOS partition
3.2 Tell Windows the location of the new swap file
3.3 Back up the Total Special Sectors
3.4 Modify the initalization and shutdown scripts to handle
our new configuration
3.5 Reenable swapping
4. A couple of notes
5. What are we exactly doing ?
6. The swapinit.sh script
7. The swaphalt.sh script
8. The msinfo.sh script
9. The original msinfo file
10. Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
Many people use both Linux and MS-Windows. The ability to do so is an
important part of "the Linux revolution"; i.e. letting people
experiment with (and get hooked on) Linux while still being able to
run their off-the-shelf software. Since both Linux and MS-Windows use
virtual memory with swap to disk, a frequently occurring question in
comp.os.linux.setup is how to share swap spaces, in order to reduce the
amount of disk space needed.
There are several methods for sharing swap spaces, the one described
in this document is probably the most complicated one but is the only
one I have encountered that allows maximum performance for both
environments without the risk of trashing a disk partition.
NOTE: If you have used a previous version of this document and have
had problems with swap space not getting properly restored (Windows
claims your permanent swap file is corrupt), try the slightly revised
shutdown script in this version.
2. What you need
This procedure have a few requirements that need to be filled. I
strongly recommend that you fill these requirements *anyway*, as there
are several problems with older versions.
* MS-DOS 5.0 or newer and MS-Windows 3.1/3.11
OR
MS-Windows 95/98
* A shutdown/init that knows to run a file on shutdown.
(The SysVinit-2.50 package can do this, for example.
SysVinit-2.50 is available from sunsite.unc.edu in
/pub/Linux/system/Daemons. Almost all current distributions
use this init package.)
3. The procedure
NOTE: This procedure has been written keeping in mind Red hat Linux 6.0
Although this procedure in general is applicable for all Linux
distributions, the details may vary. You are welcome to add the
details for your distribution. Many users will already have a
swap partition devoted to Linux. I assume you have one.
3.1. Turn off swapping and create a DOS partition
* Boot Linux. Turn off swapping by editing the /etc/fstab file and
commenting the line that describes your swap partition.
* Using fdisk under Linux, delete the swap partition in order to create
free space on the disk.
* Boot DOS. Create a DOS partition (using FDISK) the size = the size
swap space you want. If you cannot create the partition (probably
because DOS FDISK says that all the space in extended partition is
allocated to the logical drive), you can use fdisk or cfdisk under
Linux to create the partition. You can even just change the type of
your swap partition from 82h (Linux Swap) to 06h (FAT16). In that
case you don't need to delete the swap partition, just change the
type.
* Once you have created the partition, Boot DOS if you are not already
in DOS. DOS will be assigned a drive letter to your new partition.
Use that drive letter instead of X whenever these instructions lists
a command like "LABEL X:" or "COPY FOO X:DUMMY.DAT"
* Format this partition using the DOS FORMAT command.
FORMAT X:
* Set the volume label on this partition to "SWAP SPACE" using the DOS
LABEL command. Verify it by the DIR command. Please do this as a
separate step. Some versions of FORMAT do not seem to put the
volume label in the boot sector as it should. [Note: some people
has written me saying the volume label is stored in the root
directory. Yes, but at least since DOS 5.0 it has also been in the
boot sector.]
LABEL X:
DIR X:
* At this stage, you have a DOS partition ready for use for swapping.
3.2. Tell Windows the location of the new swap file
* For Windows 3.1 users --
---------------------
-Start Windows. Go to the Control Panel, select "386 Enhanced".
Select "Virtual Memory" and create a Windows Permanent swap file on
drive X: of maximum size (Windows will tell you the maximum size).
Windows may complain saying it will not use a swap file that big.
Ignore the message and create the file anyway.
-Exit Windows.
* For Windows 95/98 users --
-----------------------
-Start Windows. Go to the Control Panel (Start Settings Control
panel). Double click the System icon. In the resulting System
Properties dialog box, select the Performance tab. Now click the Virtual
Memory button. This will bring up the Virtual Memory dialog box. Select
"Let me specify my own virtual memory settings". Select the drive you
intend to share as swap space with Linux (X:). Keep the Maximum and
Minimum values as selected by Windows. Click OK. Windows will prompt you
to restart your computer. Do it.
-When you restart Windows, you will see that the win386.swp file has been
created on the X: drive. In addition, there is also the Recycled folder.
Since you don't intend to store any other files on this drive and also
a single file on this partition will be convienent, tell Windows not to
maintain Recycle Bin for this (X:) drive. On the Desktop, left click the
Recycle Bin icon, and in the resulting pop-up menu, click Properties.
This will bring up the Recycle Bin Properties dialog box. Click the
Global tab and select "Configure drives independently". Now click the
tab for X: drive (which will have the label SWAP SPACE). In this dialog
box, move the slider for "Maximum size of Recycle Bin" to 0 percent.
The "Space Reserved" entry should now read as 0 bytes. Click OK.
Restart your computer.
* Norton utilities for Win95 users --
--------------------------------
In addition to the above steps, you may want to do the following if you
have Norton Utilities for Win95 installed. In the Recycle Bin Properties
dialog box, click the Norton Protection tab. Select the drive X: and
uncheck the "Enable protection" and the "Pruge protected files after ...
days" check boxes. Click OK.
* Disk Cleanup troubles you ?
---------------------------
If you have Disk Cleanup installed, then ocassionally Windows comes
out with a "Low disk space on drive X:". Since we are using the entire
X: drive for swapping, there is no need to have any free space on X:.
To prevent this dialog box from appearing, start Disk Cleanup (point
to Start Programs Accessories System Tools Disk Cleanup). In
the resulting dialog box, select the X: drive and click OK. The "Disk
Cleanup for drive X:" dislog box appears. Click the "Settings" tab and
uncheck the "If this drive runs low on disk ... blah blah blah" check
box.
* From this stage onwards, Windows will assume that it's swap file is on
drive X:. So the drive X: must be intact each time you boot Windows.
3.3. Back up the Total Special Sectors
* Boot Linux, then log in as root.
* Use the fdisk command to find the name of the partition and its size
in blocks. Create a symbolic link from /dev/winswap to this
partition. If the partition is hda7, then type:
ln -s /dev/hda7 /dev/winswap
[NOTE TO PURISTS: Please use a symlink. The name of this partition
is going to go into several configuration files and inconsistencies
could be fatal.]
* Find the "Total Special Sectors" for the swap drive.
These are nothing but the total number of sectors required for the boot
sector, FAT and root directory. There are a number of ways to find this
number. Simplest copy the msinfo.sh file from section 8 using your
favourite editor. Give the following commands at the shell prompt
# cp Swap-Space-HOWTO msinfo.sh
# chmod +x msinfo.sh
(Much easier if you use one of the editors with KDE or GNOME)
Now, open the msinfo.sh file in the editor and delete everything except
the msinfo.sh file in section 8. Now run this file as
# ./msinfo.sh /dev/winswap
The program will print the some information about the swap partition.
Take note at the number saying "Total special sectors", and verify
that the volume label says "SWAP SPACE". If it does not, reboot DOS
and re-do the LABEL command.
* Note: You can also find the "Total Special Sectors" using tools
that can display the Boot sector like the Norton Disk Editor or
minfo from mtools under Linux. For Norton Disk Editor, select
"Boot Sector" from the Object menu. Note down the following
entries :
Reserved Sectors at beginning = r
FAT copies = f
Root directory entries = d
Sectors per FAT = s
Now the "Total Special Sectors" is given by
T = r + (s * f) + (d / 16)
However, using the above program is more convienent.
* [Optional step] Windows may occasionally leave some space on the
partition, even if it is told not to. Don't attempt to use this
space, since it will be erased any time you run Linux. If you want
to avoid accidentally using it (and lose data), you can create a
dummy file that fills that space by using the following commands:
mkdir /mnt
mount -t msdos /dev/winswap /mnt
dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/dummy.fil
umount /mnt
The dd command will report "No space left on device". This is
exactly what you want.
* Type on the shell prompt:
# dd if=/dev/winswap bs=512 count=XXX gzip -9 > /etc/winswap.gz
^^^
Replace
... where XXX is replaced with the "Total special sectors" number.
Here we are saving the Total Special Sectors in a compressed form
in the file /etc/winswap.gz
3.4. Modify the initalization and shutdown scripts to handle our new
configuration
* Now, we will modify our initalization scripts so that swap space will
be create on the partition each time Linux starts and the DOS/Windows
special sectors will be restored each time Linux shut downs.
* Instead of placing the command for handling the details directly in
the initalization scripts, we will prepare two seperate files called
swapinit.sh and swaphalt.sh. One sample of these files that should
work under Redhat Linux is given in sections 6 and 7. You can choose
to place these files under any directory, preferably /etc/rc.d/init.d.
Create the two files in this directory and copy into then the scripts
given in sections 6 and 7. One simple way is to copy this HOWTO in these
files as,
# cp Swap-Space-HOWTO /etc/rc.d/init.d/swapinit.sh
# cp Swap-Space-HOWTO /etc/rc.d/init.d/swaphalt.sh
and then using your favourite editor, delete all execpt the required
part. Now make these file "executable" by giving the following
commands
# chmod +x swapinit.sh
# chmod +x swaphalt.sh
* Run fdisk and find the size of the swap partition in blocks. In both
the above files (swap????.sh) replace the YYYYY by this number.
* Check the name of the shutdown file. For SysVinit this is the file
listed in the following line of /etc/inittab; add it if you don't
have it.
# Runlevel 0 means shut down the system
l0:0:wait:/etc/brc
(Under Red hat Linux, this file probably will be /etc/rc.d/init.d/halt)
If you are not in a position to find it out, browse through the /etc
directory and find the initialization file that contains the "swapon -a"
command. Only this much for now !
For the remainder of this file, I will assume the filename was
/etc/rc.d/init.d/halt (halt for short).
* Check the name of your system initalization file. For SysVinit, this
is the file listed in the following line of /etc/inittab.
# System initalization
si::sysinit:/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit
In case of your distribution, your file may be different. I assume
that the file is /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit (rc.sysinit for short)
* Add the following piece of code to your initalization file
(rc.sysinit), in place of the "swapon -a" command. You may consider
not deleting but just commenting the original commands so that if
something goes wrong, we can restore the script to it's initial state.
If your swapon is in /etc, replace /sbin/swapon with /etc/swapon.
If it is in /bin, replace with /bin/swapon. Do the same for mkswap.
# -----------------------------------------------------------------------
# removed by yourname
# Start up swapping.
# action "Activating swap partitions" swapon -a
# -----------------------------------------------------------------------
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# added by yourname
# Verify and initialize swap space
#
/etc/rc.d/init.d/swapinit.sh
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
* A simple way to paste the text is to start two Virtual Consoles. Log as
a root in both cases. Use your favourite editor to open this HOWTO on
one console and the script to be modified on other console. Now select
the above code with your mouse and switch to the other console. Place
the cursor at the desired position to paste and press the right mouse
button. The selected text will be copied.
* Add the following piece of code to your shutdown file (halt).Put this
after any command that might need swap to be in place. Normally, your
halt file will have the "swapoff -a" command. First replace the -a by
/dev/winswap. Then immediately after that section, add the following
commands.
# ------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Modified by yourname
# replaced "swapoff -a" by "swapoff /dev/winswap"
#
# Turn off swap, then unmount file systems.
runcmd "Turning off swap and accounting" swapoff /dev/winswap
[ -x /sbin/accton ] && /sbin/accton
# ------------------------------------------------------------------------
# ------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Added by yourname
# check swap signature and restore Windows swap info
/etc/rc.d/init.d/swaphalt.sh
# ------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.5. Reenable swapping
* Uncomment the line in /etc/fstab that you commented earlier. (Not
really necessary, since we now do not refer to fstab for swap
partitions). Reboot Linux. You should now have swapping on the new
swap device.
_____________________________________________________________________________
4. A couple of notes
* There is no need to add /dev/winswap to your /etc/fstab file. In
fact, it is probably wise not to do so (except possibly as a
comment).
* If your Linux session crashes or otherwise exits without running
/etc/rc.d/init.d/halt, you will need to reboot and exit Linux before
swapping in Windows will work. It is also possible to FORMAT X: and
re-create the Windows swapfile. The only way around this would be to
put the equivalent of the /.../halt commands in the DOS AUTOEXEC.BAT file.
I have tried to write some programs to do this, but at this stage
nothing concrete is ready. One way is to first save the Total Special
sectors in a file say C:\EDRIVE.TSS. This file, in addition to the TSS's
will also contain the Cylinder/Head/Sector (CHS) address of the first
sector on X: (This can be found out on Linux using cfdisk). The restore
program will write all the saved data to consecutive sectors beginning
with this sector. The template AUTOEXEC.BAT file in this case would by
@ECHO OFF
IF EXIST X:\WIN386.SWP GOTO SKIPRSTR
ECHO Swap file not found, proceeding to restore ...
echo y > C:\YES
LOCK X: <> NUL
RESTORE C:\EDRIVE.TSS
UNLOCK X: > NUL
DEL C:\YES
:SKIPRSTR
* One way to restore your Windows swap partition is to start Linux,
disable swapping as described above, and then use the following
command :
# swapoff -a
# zcat /etc/winswap.gz > /dev/winswap
# reboot
* If DOS' FDISK reports the partition as a "logical DOS drive", it has
a number of 5 (as in /dev/hda5) or higher. It is *NOT* the
partition labelled "extended" which has a number of 4 or less!! If
your Linux fdisk does not display logical partitions, you have a
broken Linux fdisk (Slackware 2.2 included a broken fdisk, for
example.) You can try "cfdisk" if your distribution has it, or you
will have to get a working fdisk.
* Please do not mail me unless you have checked and re-checked that
you copied your scripts correctly. More than half of the problems
reported with this Mini-HOWTO have been due to typos when copying
the scripts. (Use cut-and-paste if you can!). Even a spacing error
can cause an error. For example, if at the startup you get the messages
Verifying swap space...Linux signature found
swapon: /dev/winswap invalid argument
Then, surely there has been a typing mistake in your scripts. Please
check your scripts.
* Sometimes, the swap partition is detected to have neither Linux nor
Windows info and the "No signature found" error appears. I exactly
don't know why this happens, but for that case, I have written the
code in swap????.sh files to try six times before reporting an error.
Normally, the DOS signature should be found on the first try, but many
a times on my system it is found on iteration 2, 5 or not at all after
12 iterations. You may consider increasing the number of tries to some
value like 12 or 24, there is no harm in doing so. Once on my system,
the script could not detect the signatures even after 50 iterations !
If such a situation arises, you may consider making a symbolic link
to the swapinit.sh file in your root home directory, and execute it at
startup.
# ln -s /etc/rc.d/init.d/swapinit.sh swapinit.sh
# ./swapinit.sh
* What if the swap partition is a FAT32 ?
No, you can't have a swap partition with a FAT32 file system. First of
all, Linux can use a maximum of 128MB of swap space on a single swap
partition. Thus, if your swap partition is larger than 128MB, you are
wasting your disk space. And Windows will refuse to convert a partition
of 128MB into a FAT32 file system.
* The new style swap space
Linux knows about two styles of swap areas, the old style and the new
style. By default, you will be using the old style swap space with a
signature "SWAP-SPACE". If you want to use the new style swap space,
then first of all change "SWAP-SCAPE" in all the above scripts to
"SWAPSPACE2". Also add an option -v1 in the mkswap command in the
swapinit.sh script, as follows
/sbin/mkswap -v1 /dev/winswap YYYYY
Also, run the following commands from the shell prompt :
# swapoff /dev/winswap
# mkswap -v1 /dev/winswap YYYYY
# swapon /dev/winswap
It seems that under new style swap space, your usable swap partition can
be as large as 2GB on i386 platforms. This means that you can now have a
swap partition larger than 512MB which Windows can format as a FAT32
partition . Someone help on how do we save the "Total Special Sectors"
under a FAT32 partition.
_____________________________________________________________________________
5. What are we exactly doing ?
* Both Windows and Linux use swap space. When an OS is shut down, the
contents of the swap space are just garbage, the OS doesn't bother
about what is in it. Now what is the point in devoting a 60MB partition
for swap space to Linux and about 32MB of disk space separately to
Windows when only one of them is going to run at a time. So we want
Linux and Windows to share the same hard disk space as swap space.
* The problem is that Linux uses a partition as a swap space and Windows
uses a file as a swap space. ( Although it is possible to create a swap
file for Linux, it is not recommended. See "Linux Installation and
Getting Started" by Mett Walsh). Now if Linux uses the same partition
on which Windows stores it's swap file, it will overwrite the boot
sector, FAT and other data tables that Windows assumes to exist on every
drive. Thus, Windows will not be in a position to find the swap file on
startup and will create the win386.swp file in the windows directory.
Thus, even if by chance, your Linux crashes, Windows will be in a
position to start. In such a case ( with Windows swap file in the
Windows directory), just restore the DOS/Windows swap info by
restarting Linux and the start Windows. Now Windows will be using
the swap file on drive X: so you can safely delete the win386.swp
file in the windows directory.
* The remedy is to store those critical data tables once on the Linux
partition in some file. Then every time Linux starts, check whether
the swap space was last used by Linux or Windows (using the label you
gave to your partition). If it was Linux, just enable swapping else
first make a swap partition on the X: drive using "mkswap /dev/winswap"
and then enable swapping.
* When you shut down Linux, it is important to restore the swap partition
to the DOS format, so that Windows can start properly. For that purpose
we add the
/bin/zcat /etc/winswap.gz > /dev/winswap
command to the halt file.
_____________________________________________________________________________
6. The swapinit.sh script
This shell script initalizes the swap space on the partition. The
code for signature setection has been repeated thrice because many a
times the signature is properly detected only on the second or the
third try.
(Adapted from the original Swap-Space-HOWTO by H. Peter Anvin)
#!/bin/sh
#
# /etc/rc.d/init.d/swapinit.sh - activate the swap partition
#
# written by Rahul U. Joshi
# Verify and initialize swap space
#
echo -n 'Verifying swap space... '
loopcount=0
# flag to indicate whether the partition has been activated or not
activated=0
# check for signatures 6 times before giving up
while [ $loopcount -lt 6 ]
do
if [ "`/bin/dd 2>/dev/null if=/dev/winswap bs=1 count=10 skip=4086`" = 'SWAP-SPACE' ]; then
echo "Linux signature found, iteration $loopcount"
echo "Activating swap partitions"
swapon /dev/winswap
activated=1
break
elif [ "`/bin/dd 2>/dev/null if=/dev/winswap bs=1 count=11 skip=43`" = 'SWAP SPACE ' ]; then
echo "DOS signature found, iteration $loopcount"
echo "Making swap partition"
mkswap /dev/winswap 62464
echo "Activating swap partitions"
swapon /dev/winswap
activated=1
break
else
let loopcount=loopcount+1
fi
done
if [ $activated -ne 1 ] ; then
echo "Swap signature not found after $loopcount tries"
echo "No swapping partitions activated"
exit 1
fi
_____________________________________________________________________________
7. The swaphalt.sh script
This script first checks the Linux swap signature and then restores the
Windows filesystem on it.
(Adapted from the original Swap-Space-HOWTO by H. Peter Anvin)
#!/bin/sh
#
# swaphalt.sh This file is executed through the /etc/rc.d/init.d/halt
# script after swapping and accounting has been turned off.
#
# Author: Rahul U. Joshi
#
# check swap partition signature and restore Windows swap info
loopcount=0
# flag to indicate whether the swap info has been restored or not
restored=0
# check for swap signature 3 times before giving up
while [ $loopcount -lt 3 ]
do
if [ "`/bin/dd 2>/dev/null if=/dev/winswap bs=1 count=10 skip=4086`" = 'SWAP-SPACE' ]; then
echo "Restoring DOS/Windows swap info , iteration $loopcount"
/bin/zcat /etc/winswap.gz > /dev/winswap
restored=1
break
else
loopcount=loopcount+1
fi
done
if [ $restored -ne 1 ] ; then
echo "Swap signature not found after $loopcount tries"
echo "Skipping restoring"
fi
_____________________________________________________________________________
8. The msinfo.sh script
This shell script analyses the boot sector of the given partition and
displays some information along with the "Total Special Sectors" in a
message box. It assumes that the filesystem on the given partition is a
FAT16. If not, it will print an error message and exit. To run it, you
need the "dialog" package installed (Included with RedHat Linux). If
you have not installed it, you may find it at
Invoke the program as
# msinfo
#!/bin/sh
#
# msinfo.sh This shell script displays the boot sector of the
# given partition.
#
# Author: Rahul U. Joshi
#
# Modifications Removed the use of expr and replaced it by the let
# command.
# check for command line arguments
if [ $# -ne 1 ]; then
echo "Usage: msinfo
exit 1
fi
# check whether the input name is a block device
if [ ! -b $1 ]; then
echo "msinfo: $1 is not a block device"
exit 1
fi
# create two temporary files for use
TMPFILE=`mktemp -q /tmp/$0.XXXXXX`
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
echo "msinfo: Can't create temp file, exiting..."
exit 1
fi
TXTFILE=`mktemp -q /tmp/$0.XXXXXX`
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
echo "msinfo: Can't create temp file, exiting..."
rm -f $TMPFILE
exit 1
fi
back_title="`printf "%78s" "msinfo, Information about FAT16 filesystem -- Rahul Joshi"`"
dialog --title "Boot sector of $1" --backtitle "$back_title" --infobox "\nAnalysing boot sector for $1\nPlease wait ..." 14 60
# truncate TXTFILE to zero length
echo > $TXTFILE
# get Formatting DOS version
dd 2>/dev/null if=$1 bs=1 count=8 skip=3 dd 2>/dev/null of=$TMPFILE
printf >>$TXTFILE "%30s : %s\n" "Formatting DOS version" "`cat $TMPFILE`"
# get file system
dd 2>/dev/null if=$1 bs=1 count=8 skip=54 dd 2>/dev/null of=$TMPFILE
printf >>$TXTFILE "%30s : %s\n" "Filesystem" "`cat $TMPFILE`"
# check if filesystem in a FAT16
if [ "`cat $TMPFILE`" != "FAT16 " ]; then
dialog --title "Boot sector of $1" --backtitle "$back_title" --infobox "\nCan't find a FAT16 filesystem on $1" 14 60
exit 2
fi
# get volume label in boot sector
dd 2>/dev/null if=$1 bs=1 count=11 skip=43 dd 2>/dev/null of=$TMPFILE
printf >>$TXTFILE "%30s : %s\n" "Volume label in boot sector" "`cat $TMPFILE`"
# get Sector size
dd 2>/dev/null if=$1 bs=1 count=2 skip=11 od -An -tdS dd 2>/dev/null of=$TMPFILE
printf >>$TXTFILE "%30s : %d\n" "Sector size" `cat $TMPFILE`
sector_size=`cat $TMPFILE`
# get Reserved sectors
dd 2>/dev/null if=$1 bs=1 count=2 skip=14 od -An -tdS dd 2>/dev/null of=$TMPFILE
printf >>$TXTFILE "%30s : %d\n" " Reserved sectors" `cat $TMPFILE`
reserved_sectors=`cat $TMPFILE`
# get FAT sectors
dd 2>/dev/null if=$1 bs=1 count=1 skip=16 od -An -tdS dd 2>/dev/null of=$TMPFILE
fat_count=`cat $TMPFILE`
dd 2>/dev/null if=$1 bs=1 count=2 skip=22 od -An -tdS dd 2>/dev/null of=$TMPFILE
sectors_per_fat=`cat $TMPFILE`
# calculate the no of sectors allocated for FAT's
let fat_sectors=fat_count*sectors_per_fat
printf >>$TXTFILE "%30s : %u (%u x %u) \n" "FAT sectors" "$fat_sectors" "$fat_count" "$sectors_per_fat"
# get root directory sectors
dd 2>/dev/null if=$1 bs=1 count=2 skip=17 od -An -tdS dd 2>/dev/null of=$TMPFILE
root_sectors=`cat $TMPFILE`
# calculate the no of sectors allocated for root directory
let root_sectors=root_sectors*32/sector_size
printf >>$TXTFILE "%30s : %u\n" "Root directory sectors" "$root_sectors"
# get Total special sectors
let total=reserved_sectors+fat_sectors+root_sectors
printf >>$TXTFILE "%30s : %u\n" "Total special sectors" "$total"
# display the information in a message box
dialog --title "Boot sector of $1" --backtitle "$back_title" --msgbox "`cat $TXTFILE`" 14 60
# delete temporary files
rm -f $TMPFILE
rm -f $TXTFILE
# end of msinfo.sh
_____________________________________________________________________________
9. The original msinfo file
Here is the msinfo file required to find the "Total Special Sectors". It
was included by the original author of this HOWTO in an encoded form. First
copy the text from the line "begin 755 msinfo.gz" to the line "end" into a
temporary file say temp.uu. Then uudecode this file, and finally gunzip to get
msinfo file.
# uudecode temp.uu
# gunzip msinfo.gz
Now run the program using the command
# ./msinfo /dev/winswap
The program displays the boot sector information for given partition as well
as the "Total Special Sectors" for the drive.
10. Acknowledgements
This Mini-HOWTO has been derived from the Swap-Space Mini HOWTO by
H. Peter Anvin. I have added the Windows 95/98 specific details as well
as a few Red hat Linux specific details. The msinfo program given in the
original HOWTO didn't work on my Redhat linux 6 system, so I created a similar
program. However, I have also included the original msinfo program. Thanks to
all those great people involved with the developement of Linux, to the people
at RedHat for giving a great Linux distrbution and to Sanjiv Guha, one of the
co-authors of "Red Hat Linux 6 Unleashed" from Techmedia for guidance about
shell programming. Right now, I have no internet access, so I don't know how
would you contact me in case of questions. May be someone from you local
place may come to your rescue.
Enjoy Linux,
Rahul :-)
