Firewalker reborn, Part 2: Really lean KDE?

ME dugan at passwall.com
Thu Mar 21 16:35:26 PST 2002


I seem to recall I or another suggested this, but did not recall the
answer...

If the windows machines have their FS formatted as FAT16 (NT) or FAT32
(W2k) then you can mount the windows disk (rw) and then create/use a file
on the root of the windows disk or in the windows folder called
win386.swp, and then connect it to the loopback interface and mount the
loop back device as a swap.

If the machines are using NT/2k with NTFS, you *could* (though I would not
suggest it) enable the NTFS filesystem kernel option, and then enable the
(DANGEROUS) write option, but only to use the pre-existing swap file as a
loopback mounted swap. (If you read the risks of using the NTFS for
writes, use of pre-existing files without changing their length seems to
be fairly safe.)

How about these? I seem to recall that even if these *.swp files are
deleted in windows 95/98/ME/NT/2K/XP they are regenerated the next time
the windows OS restarts. As far as "weird data" being in the files, I
expect it is initialized for use as memory is shifted to windows swap.

The above may offer a solution for you.

-ME

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On Thu, 21 Mar 2002, Lincoln Peters wrote:

> Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 15:55:21 -0800
> From: Lincoln Peters <lincoln_peters at hotmail.com>
> Reply-To: talk at nblug.org
> To: talk at nblug.org
> Subject: Firewalker reborn, Part 2: Really lean KDE?
> 
> I have deployed Palantir (the new netbooting server) at RCHS.  It's in the 
> spot where Melampus (the old netbooting server) used to sit, and, strangely 
> enough, some Freshman have asked the teacher there if it's the original 
> computer tower (and I explained that full-size towers still exist, but are 
> uncommon for personal computers).  I have compiled the netbooting kernel, 
> and everything looks ready to go (I copied the installation from Isildur 
> into /netboot on Palantir), but the issue of usability has come up again.
> 
> On all of the non-netbooting computers I've set up (Isildur, Strider, and 
> some that are still sitting in my garage), I've used the KDE desktop because 
> it appears to be the most user-friendly environment available.  However, 
> when I checked the memory usage on Isildur (which, like the NT workstations, 
> has 64MB of RAM), it's using about 34MB of its swap space when KDE is 
> running, not counting any user applications (Konqueror, KWord, etc.) that it 
> might be running.  These netbooting systems will not have the luxury of swap 
> space, but everything I could come up with using FVWM looked a bit too 
> intimidating (I won't be completely satisfied until every technophobe I know 
> can use it by intuition).
> 
> Is there a way to strip down the default KDE installation in Red Hat 7.2 so 
> that it won't cause the machine to run out of memory?  If not, is it 
> possible to do so with GNOME?  Or is my idea doomed, and do I need more 
> practice with the FVWM configuration?
> 
> 
> And, no, I don't have the kind of authority that would allow me to perform 
> any sort of upgrades on the NT workstations.  I cannot add memory or 
> re-partition them; the only thing that makes the netbooting project 
> acceptable is that it doesn't mess with the hard drives on the NT 
> workstations (and the real technician still doesn't know what I'm doing).
> 
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