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Thread: format on boot

  1. #1
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Location
    Germany
    Beans
    19
    Distro
    Ubuntu 19.04 Disco Dingo

    format on boot

    Hi folks,

    I have a question I couldn't find an answer yet: is it possible to set up a configuration (fstab, script, whatever), so the Ubuntu (or Linux in general) always formats a drive at boot? For explanation, here is my situation: I have a 120GB SSD with 3 OS's: Ubuntu, Win and OS X. I have a 4GB hda6 partition, which is my swap. My idea: I would use it as swap under Ubuntu, but for the page file under OS X. But for that, I have to reformat it each time I start up the laptop, at a pretty early stage of boot.
    Has anyone experience with such stuff? Thanks in advance
    MacBook Air 13" Mid11 Ubuntu 19.04 btrfs + Win7 + OS X 10.13

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    /dev/root
    Beans
    Hidden!

    Re: format on boot

    I haven't done exactly what you want, but similar tasks. If there is no entry in fstab, you can use mkswap to create linux-swap in that partition and after that use swapon to start using it.

    Swapping in an SSD will be fast compared to a HDD, but it will increase wear, and SSDs have a shorter lifetime (number of write operations) compared to HDDs, even if it is improving and much better than a couple of years ago. Maybe a swap file is better, because it can be wiped and the SSD can be 'cleaned' with discard and the next time the swapfile will be localized somewhere else, which will spread the wear. Or even better would be to swap to RAM (if there is enough of it) for example using zRAM. I don't know if there are such options for OS X.

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