swap partition missing?

[Paul Howarth]

Hongwei Li wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I just found that my fc3 system's swap partition is "gone".  When I
> installed the system, I set it to 1Gb.  The kernel is 2.6.10-1.766_FC3.  I
> don't know when it started, but here are some information:
> 
> # free
>              total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
> Mem:       1035748     658792     376956          0     145380     272540
> -/+ buffers/cache:     240872     794876
> Swap:            0          0          0
> 
> # cat /etc/fstab
> 
> # This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man fstab-sync' for details
> LABEL=/1                /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
> none                    /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
> none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
> LABEL=/home1            /home                   ext3    defaults,usrquota 
>       1 2
> LABEL=/opt              /opt                    ext3    defaults        1 2
> none                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
> none                    /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
> LABEL=/tmp1             /tmp                    ext3    defaults        1 2
> LABEL=/usr1             /usr                    ext3    defaults        1 2
> LABEL=/var1             /var                    ext3    defaults,usrquota 
>       1 2
> LABEL=SWAP-hda7         swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
> ...
> 
> I tried this:
> 
> # swapon -a
> swapon: cannot find the device for LABEL=SWAP-hda7
> 
> The system log does not show anything related to this problem.  Can
> somebody tell me what may cause this problem?  how to check it further and
> fix it?

Have you booted one of the LiveCD style distributions on this machine? I 
have heard that one of them may remove the label from swap partitions.

You might try changing the fstab entry:
LABEL=SWAP-hda7 swap swap defaults 0 0
to:
/dev/hda7 swap swap defaults 0 0

and see if that works. If it does, you might want to relabel the 
partition (when it's not being used), using (I think - the -L option is 
undocumented):

# mkswap -L SWAP-hda7 /dev/hda7

Paul.