Puppy not detecting my swap partition? Solved

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blackthorn3d
Posts: 8
Joined: Thu 19 Feb 2009, 22:36

Puppy not detecting my swap partition? Solved

#1 Post by blackthorn3d »

Hi I'm using a PII 300mhz with only 64 megs ram and 8.5 gig Hd till I get my system rebuilt.

I did a fresh dual boot setup win98se is on sda1 using 5 gigs.

then I created a swap partition of 128megs on sda2

then I created the Main linux partition as ext3 on sda3 around 3 gigs.

Went through full install setup then installed grub on mbr.

Setup works fine I can boot into puppy or windows fine but puppy is not detecting the swap partition when it boots up or even after its running and I'm not sure why.

Originally I created the swap partition using cfdisk in damn small linux I set it as ext2 type 82 in cfdisk.

Then I looked at my partitions from gparted in puppy and it was showing my swap as a vfat partition so I deleted the swap and created a new swap partition and selected format to linux swap in puppy's gparted.

then I did stuff like this:
swapoff -a
mkswap /dev/sda2
swapon /dev/sda2 <-- does activate there but I have to do it everytime I reboot.

Read something about enabling swap at boot time by editing
/etc/fstab but that was for a different linux.

Later I read /etc/fstab has no effect in puppy?

So I back to square 1.

?Is there a file I can edit for it to enable swap on boot?

Or is there a specific partition type I need for the swap?

I'm a little confused cause most swap files are type 82 ext2
and in puppys gparted you can select to format to an ext2 partition or format to Linux swap so i selected linux swap.

I'm using puppy 4.3.1

1 more question I cant seem to locate where puppy is saving my settings at on full install?

On my old system I had a frugal setup and it had a pup save file but I don't know where it's saving on full hd install?

thanks for any help It's not urgent just annoying.
Last edited by blackthorn3d on Wed 21 Apr 2010, 22:41, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
8-bit
Posts: 3406
Joined: Wed 04 Apr 2007, 03:37
Location: Oregon

#2 Post by 8-bit »

As to where Puppy is saving your settings, with a full install, they are written to the filesystem on the full install.
The settings are not a seperate file as in a frugal install.
As to the swap partition being used, open a terminal and type "free".
If the swap partition is being used, you should see some memory allocated to it as being used.

User avatar
duke93535
Posts: 194
Joined: Thu 05 May 2005, 16:45
Location: California , High Desert

#3 Post by duke93535 »

The terminal command, "swapoff -a" will not work without the correct line in /etc/fstab.

Code: Select all

/dev/sda2        swap              swap             auto,rw,user                     0 0
Normally, Puppy will use a swap partition automatically.

duke

looseSCREWorTWO
Posts: 812
Joined: Thu 04 Feb 2010, 13:16
Location: Australia, 1999 Toshiba laptop, 512mb RAM, no HDD, 431 Retro & 421 Retro

#4 Post by looseSCREWorTWO »

My Swap is never detected at Bootup

<----- on this prehistoric hardware with no HD

After bootup I have to unplug/replug the USB SD card reader which has the Swap on it, open a terminal & type:
swapon /dev/sda1

blackthorn3d
Posts: 8
Joined: Thu 19 Feb 2009, 22:36

#5 Post by blackthorn3d »

Hi thanks for replies I replied yesterday but since my cmos battery is dead and my date and time wasn't set I think reply was lost in another dimension.

I had tried the free command and also

cat /proc/swaps and thats how i noticed my swap wasn't being used.

I tried adding that code line in fstab
/dev/sda2 swap swap auto,rw,user 0 0

still no luck originally there was no line in fstab refering to swap at all
so I had added one similar to the above but still didn't work it was this.

/dev/sda2 swap swap defaults 0 0

Does it matter what order I created the swap and main linux partitions?
cause I created the swap first on sda2 then used rest of the space for sda3 for puppy.

User avatar
duke93535
Posts: 194
Joined: Thu 05 May 2005, 16:45
Location: California , High Desert

#6 Post by duke93535 »

I have a feeling you're expecting to see your swap being used when you have physical memory still unused. The swap is used only when you have exceeded the physical memory of the system. Here is my "free" results and is normal.

total used free shared buffers
Mem: 256072 125684 130388 0 44516
Swap: 522104 0 522104
Total: 778176 125684 652492

duke

PS: In /etc/rc.d/rc.local you could always add the line "swapon /dev/sda2" if it's needed with a text editor. I also find that on my old 400mhz computer that i like the retro puppy 431 better.

blackthorn3d
Posts: 8
Joined: Thu 19 Feb 2009, 22:36

#7 Post by blackthorn3d »

In reply to Duke yes I thought about that swap might not be active right away but I had tested it running seamonkey and browsing some my hard drive was running wild on to load certain pages and I checked to see if swap was working and it wasn't.

Problem is solved now sort of heres what I did.

Booted up from live cd and ran Gparted again

selected my sda2 partition wich was showing as linux swap.

selected format to linux swap.

rebooted and typed free in terminal and now it shows the swap as working.

so either something was wrong with my partition before or I messed it up somehow trying to activate it.

Anyways it's working now and thanks for the tips.

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