Swap problem with F9 PPC

Rick Stevens ricks at nerd.com
Tue May 20 20:21:19 UTC 2008


Guillaume wrote:
> Thank you for your help.
> Before your mail, I tried to re-install the ibook with an other 
> partitioning...
> I selected "Removes all partitions and creates default partitions" ...
> With this option, I get a F9 system with no swap problem !
> Now it works ! :)

Hmmmmm.......

> About my previous swap problem, there are 2 options:
> - I made a bad personnal partitioning... possible, but I don't know why 
> and I did not get any anaconda warning/error...

Yeah, that's a bit worrying.

> - Anaconda and/or F9 have a bug on PPC when using personal partitioning...
> (I installed 3 times F9 on this ibook with personal partitioning and 3 
> times I get this swap problem...)

Well, it'd be nice to decipher what actually is wrong with your manual
partitioning.  I'm willing to continue helping if you want to try again.

> Rick Stevens a écrit :
>> Guillaume wrote:
>>> The result of fdisk and parted :
>>>
>>> [root at ibook ~]# fdisk -l
>>>
>>>       There is a valid Mac label on this disk.
>>>       Unfortunately fdisk(1) cannot handle these disks.
>>>       Use either pdisk or parted to modify the partition table.
>>>       Nevertheless some advice:
>>>       1. fdisk will destroy its contents on write.
>>>       2. Be sure that this disk is NOT a still vital
>>>          part of a volume group. (Otherwise you may
>>>             erase the other disks as well, if unmirrored.)
>>>
>>> Disque /dev/hda: 60.0 Go, 60011642880 octets
>>> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders
>>> Units = cylindres of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
>>>
>>> Périphérique Amorce    Début         Fin      Blocs    Id  Système
>>>
>>> [root at ibook ~]# pdisk
>>> -bash: pdisk: command not found
>>>
>>> [root at ibook ~]# parted -l
>>> Model: TOSHIBA MK6025GAS (ide)
>>> Disque /dev/hda : 60,0GB
>>> Taille des secteurs (logiques/physiques): 512B/512B
>>> Table de partition : mac
>>>
>>> Numéro  Début   Fin     Taille  Système de fichiers  Nom       
>>> Fanions 1      512B    32,8kB  32,3kB                       
>>> Apple              <=== don t know what it is, may be apple needed
>>> 2      32,8kB  1081kB  1049kB  hfs                  untitled  
>>> démarrage  <=== The apple boot loader
>>> 3      1081kB  15,7GB  15,7GB  ext3                 
>>> untitled           <=== my /
>>> 4      15,7GB  16,8GB  1074MB  linux-swap           swap      
>>> swap     <=== my swap
>>> 5      16,8GB  60,0GB  43,2GB  ext3                 
>>> untitled           <=== my /home
>>>
>>> I seems that I have no extended partition ...
>>> It can be apple specific...
>>
>> It very well may be.
>>
>> DISCLAIMER: I've never used a Mac with Linux before, so anything I say
>> here should be looked at VERY carefully.
>>
>>> And swapon -s .... is empty :(((((
>>> [root at ibook ~]# swapon -s
>>> Filename        Type        Size    Used    Priority
>>>
>>> I install 3 times F9, I always use the manual partitionning, and I 
>>> get I times this swap problem...
>>
>> Ok, try "swapon -a" (should start swap).  Watch carefully to see if it
>> complains about any missing devices.  If it does NOT complain, try
>> "swapon -s" and see if it's working.
>>
>> If "swapon -a" DOES complain, you may need to change your /etc/fstab
>> to use the "/dev/sda4" nomenclature rather than "LABEL=swap-sda4".  It
>> may be that swapon doesn't recognize the label on the filesystem.  You
>> can also try "swapon -L swap-sda4" (to manually try to force the 
>> label) or "swapon /dev/sda4" (to manually use /dev/sda4).
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Rick Stevens a écrit :
>>>> Guillaume wrote:
>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>
>>>>> I installed an ibook G4 (256 Mo SDRAM) with Fedora 9 PPC.
>>>>> I have a problem with the SWAP.
>>>>>
>>>>> - the gnome system appet show me that I don t use the SWAP...
>>>>>
>>>>> - when I use top command I get:
>>>>> Swap:        0k total,        0k used,        0k free,    82388k 
>>>>> cached
>>>>>
>>>>> - the SWAP partition size is 1024 Mo !
>>>>> I set it at install time and I verify with now with gparted
>>>>>
>>>>> - The SWAP partition is in the /etc/fstab:
>>>>> LABEL=SWAP-hda4         swap                    swap    
>>>>> defaults        0 0
>>>>
>>>> Uh, oh.  Methinks I see an issue here.  First, I didn't know you could
>>>> use labels for swap partitions (since they don't have a real filesystem
>>>> on them).  I've always used the /dev name of the device (in my case
>>>> using LVM, it's /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01).
>>>>
>>>> On top of that, partition 4 is the extended partition which contains
>>>> /dev/hda5, /dev/hda6 and so on.  Using that as swap (if you could force
>>>> it) might cause LOTS of grief.  A dump of "fdisk -l" would be nice.
>>>> If you have a /dev/hda5 in there, then using hda4 as swap can be fatal.
>>>>
>>>>> - When I run a task that use some CPU/Memory, It crashs the kernel
>>>>> When I does not crash, I get some really bad errors like "can not 
>>>>> fork: counld not alocate memory"
>>>>> Due to this problem, I can not run yum update on X session, It uses 
>>>>> to memory
>>>>> I run init 3 and then I run yum update ...
>>>>> But It is not a normal behaviour
>>>>>
>>>>> Someone have any idea of what happened ?
>>>>
>>>> What does "swapon -s" show?  Here's mine (granted, X86_64):
>>>>
>>>> [root at prophead ~]# swapon -s
>>>> Filename                         Type         Size    Used  Priority
>>>> /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol01  partition    2031608 1500  -1
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer                       rps2 at nerd.com -
- Hosting Consulting, Inc.                                           -
-                                                                    -
- If at first you don't succeed, quit. No sense being a damned fool! -
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