linux kernel problem (disklabel and swap)

[Daniel Cavanagh <nofsk@vtown.com.au>]

hi

i recently had the problem with a bsd disklabel and swap and as someone 
suggested, the swap slice did not have SWAPSPACE in it and that running 
mkswap would fix this. sure enough it did, but then i wondered why 
swapon allowed /dev/hda3 as a valid swap. so i had a look and SWAPSPACE2 
was there, right at the start of the openbsd partition, inside the 
disklabel. so i have come to the conclusion that openbsd tells the world 
via the disklabel that a partition/slice is swap rather than at the 
start of the swap slice. the linux kernel does not know this and wants 
SWAPSPACE2 at the start of the partition/slice. to test this i booted up 
openbsd and forced it to swap. it wrote over the SWAPSPACE2 in the 
slice. so i think that the linux kernel needs to be fix so that if an 
openbsd partition exists, the kernel expects SWAPSPACE2 in the disklabel 
rather than the actual swap slice. i don't know if this is true for 
other *BSD though.

i hope this helps.

thanks, daniel.