Not sure if swapfile is working

Forum: HD Install
Topic: Not sure if swapfile is working
started by: Fingerbun

Posted by Fingerbun on May 13 2006,21:57

Hi, I am teaching myself something about Linux using DSL as a sandbox on an old first generation Pentium with 16MB RAM. I think DSL is a very impressive product.

I have got as far as a hard disk install, but I think there's something wrong with the swapping. Observed symptoms are:

* An error message at bootup "Swap area shorter than signature indicates"

* The dispay on top right of the screen always reports 0% swap usage

* The display on top right of machine reports file systems as 724M / 897M. I have partitioned as hda1=128M swapfile and hda2=955M bootable partition

* When I try to work the machine harder things start to fail. (EG opening the spreadsheet program, loading the Saturn jpg as wallpaper, etc). Symptoms of failure can include that the program I try to run doesn't start, or that the machine hangs, or the gui exits and throws me to text mode. This consistently occurs sooner in Fluxbox than in JWM.

Any suggestions on what's going on and how to get over it?

Adam

Posted by pr0f3550r on May 14 2006,14:55

Shouldn't swap always be after the boot patition?

Does your swap appear in 'mount'?

Posted by jls legalize on May 15 2006,10:50

I can I see if dsl is using dos swap file?

Posted by Fingerbun on May 18 2006,03:35

ok, I have changed my configuration to be

hda1 : Win95 Fat 32 - will eventually be grey cat linux (but will become a DOS partition for Grey Cat Linux)
hda2 : Linux - DSL
hda3 : swap. Have made it a Linux swap type.

The mount tool shows hda3 as unmounted. DSL still seems to think it is swapping on hda1 and /proc/meminfo shows all zeros against swap

I tried modifying /etc/fstab to change this behaviour, and it was overwritten when I rebooted. So somewhere else in the system must think I want to swap on hda1....I just need to figure out where. Any suggestions?

Posted by Fingerbun on May 30 2006,13:10

Hi all, still no luck with getting my swapfile working.

If noone has any specific ideas, can anyone point me to a good reference for how this all works so I can learn more and maybe solve my problem?

Also I have been told about a "makeswap" command, which DSL appears not to recognise. Is that command implemented in DSL?

Posted by doobit on May 30 2006,13:25

It's mkswap and must be run in a terminal as root.
< http://www.lissot.net/partition/partition-08.html >

Posted by Fingerbun on May 31 2006,12:18

Thanks doobit. That got me there.

For anyone who comes after:

sudo su
mkswap <device>
swapon <device>