Re:[cobalt-users] Making a swapfile

[Grant Stern <grant@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

thank you for the help on this gerald.

inre: kswapd went zombie and other bad things

i figure stuff really belongs under this thread though.  i'll just fill 
in my details to where i stopped.


> Subject:  [cobalt-users] Making a swapfile
> From:     Gerald Waugh <gwaugh () frontstreetnetworks ! com>
> Date:     2002-09-10 1:49:20
>
> My system has 512MB memory,  I want a 1GB swapfile
> This is the method I use to create the swapfile
>
> #### look at meminfo ####
> [root tmp]# cat /proc/meminfo
>         total:    used:    free:  shared: buffers:  cached:
> Mem:  529395712 521211904  8183808 83701760 375746560 16183296
> Swap: 237297664  2347008 234950656
> MemTotal:    516988 kB
> MemFree:       7992 kB
> MemShared:    81740 kB
> Buffers:     366940 kB
> Cached:       15804 kB
> *SwapTotal:   231736 kB*
> SwapFree:    229444 kB

this is mine

[root tmp]# cat /proc/meminfo
        total:    used:    free:  shared: buffers:  cached:
Mem:  263483392 216862720 46620672 74063872 71106560 61083648
Swap: 133885952   372736 133513216
MemTotal:    257308 kB
MemFree:      45528 kB
MemShared:    72328 kB
Buffers:      69440 kB
Cached:       59652 kB
SwapTotal:   130748 kB
SwapFree:    130384 kB


> #### Check current swaps ####
> [root tmp]# cat /proc/swaps
> Filename                        Type            Size    Used    
> Priority
> /dev/md6                        partition       231736  1804    -1

tried this, but my raq2 doesn't have a /proc/swaps file.   any other 
way to get this info.


> #### cd to /home/tmp ####
> [root tmp]# cd /home/tmp
>
> #### create the swap file, using dd insures no holes ####
> [root tmp]# dd if=/dev/zero of=swapfile bs=1024 count=1048576
> 1048576+0 records in
> 1048576+0 records out

so far so good, i just made mine  [root tmp]# dd if=/dev/zero 
of=swapfile bs=512 count=524288

half a gig should be perfect to go with 130MB  swap partition and 256 
mb ram.

> #### execute  'mkswap; ####
> [root tmp]# /sbin/mkswap -c -v1 /home/tmp/swapfile
> Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 1073737728 bytes

[root tmp]# /sbin/mkswap -c -v1 /home/tmp/swapfile
Usage: /sbin/mkswap [-c] /dev/name [blocks]

and there is the Uh-Oh.  when i followed instructions blindly, that was 
the result.  not being good at following anything anyway, i proceeded 
to try this:


[root tmp]# /sbin/mkswap -c -v1 /home/tmp/swapfile 524288
Usage: /sbin/mkswap [-c] /dev/name [blocks]

not much better, then this was mildly ok, but not good enough:

[root tmp]# /sbin/mkswap -c -/home/tmp/swapfile 524288
Setting up swapspace  size = 133890048

which makes my 512 mb or so empty file into a 127 mb swap file.

the new questions are:

does the raq2 and its dinosauric version number of red hat allow such a 
large swap?

the word of Linus himself seems to indicate otherwise here:
http://hegel.ittc.ukans.edu/topics/linux/man-pages/man8/mkswap.8.html

should i just accept a 127 mb swap file and quit bitching and make my 
empty file accordingly?

or, am i just missing something incredibly obvious and deserve a 
spanking (from female members of the list only!)???

 after 90 smoothe slappy days of serving, my poor raq has had two hard 
boots in 3 days from the kswapd crashing, even tho its barely using the 
swap anymore . . . .

grant