De-activate a swap partition - I don't believe it!

[jdow]

From: "Craig White" <craigwhite at azapple.com>
> On Sun, 2006-03-19 at 22:47 +0000, Anne Wilson wrote:
>> On Sunday 19 March 2006 22:20, Anne Wilson wrote:
>> > On Sunday 19 March 2006 21:11, Jeff Vian wrote:
>> > > You might try fdisk to do the partitioning instead of gparted.  That may
>> > > be the problem.
>> > > fdisk -l only reports the partition table it sees. If nothing it
>> > > recognizes is there it cannot report it.
>> > >
>> > > Sometimes the kernel sees one partition table, and when changes are made
>> > > it *requires* a reboot to see the new table.  Sometimes it sees the
>> > > change without a reboot.  I have not really figured out the differences,
>> > > but I do know that after a reboot it will see the current table
>> > > correctly.
>> > >
>> > > I tend to stick with the tried and true command line tools because of
>> > > proven reliability.
>> >
>> > I was going to do that, but the more I read and the less sure I felt. 
>> > "There are several *fdisk programs around.  Each has its problems and
>> > strengths. Try them in the order parted, fdisk, sfdisk."  Three lots of man
>> > pages, and by the end I was thoroughly confused.
>> >
>> > Rebooting didn't help.  During bootup it reported
>> >
>> > I/O error on device hdb, logical block 0.
>> >
>> Last word for tonight -
>> 
>> [root at borg ~]# fdisk hdb
>> 
>> Unable to open hdb
> ----
> it would be nice if you thought about some of this stuff or checked the
> man page first...fdisk works with devices.
> 
> fdisk /dev/hdb
> 
> Craig

Boy howdy do I agree with you, Craig. I wear myself out trying to help
another problem child who charges in "bull in the china shop" style
entirely too often. His configuration is "wipe the disk and rebuild"
at this time. <sigh>

{o.o}