My Hard Drive is 40GB and was originally setup for 20GB & 20GB. I thought I was going to make things easier for the setup, so I completly deleted the partions from FDISK, gave C: 15GB gave D:10, AND LEFT THE REMAINING 15GB UNALLOCATED. I figured that LINUX may want to do things its own way. I did a fresh install of WinME and reinstalled my apps and all the windows stuff.
Once ME was done, I booted from the RH9 CD and everything went well till I hit the Auto Partion. It would NOT do squat. I told disk druid to create a / and /boot, which it did, but it would not create a swap. I decided to skip that portion of the install and continue.
**BUT** everything seems beautiful. GRUB comes up at power up, I can select from DOS(winme) or Linux, LINUX detected all my hardware completly, I can surf the internet with Mozilla, heck, i even was able to update my linux OS files from the RedHat Network, (like windows update) I went back to the RH9 CD's and installed SAMBA support and I am able to see my other Windows computers, and share files.
Mount still does not show a swap, but would like to find out how much longer I can go without it.
cpierce69
06-29-2003, 10:52 AM
Originally posted by surfer2k3
Just unchaining myself from the Windows world and have created a dual boot environment w Win2kpro and RedHat 9.0. Unfortunately I didn't make the swap file 2x the existing physical ram and the boot partition is way too big. I need to find a way to correct these oversights without destroying this installation. Is this possible using some Linux freeware that I am not aware of?
I already know about Partition Magic 8.0 and it's claim of being Linux capable now but the price is prohibitive to say the least.
If someone out there has done this procedure or knows of any Linux freeware or shareware please let me know.
My installation seems to be rock solid and other than this partition size blunder all went well. Whew!!
Surfer2k3
My Hard Drive is 40GB and was originally setup for 20GB & 20GB. I thought I was going to make things easier for the setup, so I completly deleted the partions from FDISK, gave C: 15GB gave D:10, AND LEFT THE REMAINING 15GB UNALLOCATED. I figured that LINUX may want to do things its own way. I did a fresh install of WinME and reinstalled my apps and all the windows stuff.
Once ME was done, I booted from the RH9 CD and everything went well till I hit the Auto Partion. It would NOT do squat. I told disk druid to create a / and /boot, which it did, but it would not create a swap. I decided to skip that portion of the install and continue.
**BUT** everything seems beautiful. GRUB comes up at power up, I can select from DOS(winme) or Linux, LINUX detected all my hardware completly, I can surf the internet with Mozilla, heck, i even was able to update my linux OS files from the RedHat Network, (like windows update)
As of now I am still without a swap, according to mount from a terminal window. I am VERY new to LINUX, but have a lot of experience in DOS/Windows, and it boggles me to know that I can run stable with only PHYSICAL memory.
sploo22
06-29-2003, 10:56 AM
You can actually use a file for swap space like Windows does, it's just not as efficient.
First, create an empty file of whatever size you want. For a 200MB one, use "dd bs=200M count=1 < /dev/null > whateverfile". To activate the swapfile, run "swapon whateverfile" as root. If you want to use it permanently, you may want to put the second command in your startup scripts.
If you have quite a bit of RAM, you'll only need swap space if you run lots of memory-hogging programs at once.
cpierce69
06-29-2003, 11:00 AM
Originally posted by DMR
A swap partition can't hurt if you got space on the drive. Many people will advise you make swap twice the size of your physical RAM, but with 384M of RAM on a low-load/light-duty system it wouldn't have to be nearly that large.
I am running without a swap and 256MB SDRAM. My install failed to create a swap, and mount does not show one to this day. How would I go and create a swap, and how does the system know its there to use it? my HD still has about 5GB of UNALLOCATED space, the rest is used by windows and the RH9 install.
RH9 works great for now, anyway!
cpierce69
06-29-2003, 11:10 AM
Originally posted by sploo22
You can actually use a file for swap space like Windows does, it's just not as efficient.
First, create an empty file of whatever size you want. For a 200MB one, use "dd bs=200M count=1 < /dev/null > whateverfile". To activate the swapfile, run "swapon whateverfile" as root. If you want to use it permanently, you may want to put the second command in your startup scripts.
If you have quite a bit of RAM, you'll only need swap space if you run lots of memory-hogging programs at once.
I have 256MB. The other thing I was thinking about is how do I find out how much of a memory load LINUX has. Windows for example, I can see by right-clicking on my coumputer and loooking at system, i see that i have, for example, 81% resources free. Granted that is overall, but I can use Norton to tell me exactly what my PHYSICAL memory usage is at. I would like to do a before and after, with your example, to enure myself that I did it correctly, and that RH9 sees that additional virtual memory.
Thanks
jlmb
06-29-2003, 11:25 AM
Originally posted by cpierce69
I am running without a swap and 256MB SDRAM. My install failed to create a swap, and mount does not show one to this day. How would I go and create a swap, and how does the system know its there to use it? my HD still has about 5GB of UNALLOCATED space, the rest is used by windows and the RH9 install.
RH9 works great for now, anyway!
Are you really running without swap, i think it's a must but im not sure though. mount doesn't show swap.
To Display amount of free and used memory in the system use:
If you don't have a swap partition, it's probably easier to make a swapfile on your existing partition than to resize that and add a swap partition. Look up "mkswap" and "swapon"; you should be able to make one easily if you read the two respective man pages for the commands.
And if you want to share your swap partition with Windows - yes, it IS possible - go to http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/Swap-Space.html
o0zi
06-29-2003, 11:37 AM
To check your memory load, type "free" at the console.
mdwatts
06-29-2003, 11:38 AM
Originally posted by cpierce69
My Hard Drive is 40GB and was originally setup for 20GB & 20GB. I thought I was going to make things easier for the setup, so I completly deleted the partions from FDISK, gave C: 15GB gave D:10, AND LEFT THE REMAINING 15GB UNALLOCATED. I figured that LINUX may want to do things its own way. I did a fresh install of WinME and reinstalled my apps and all the windows stuff.
Once ME was done, I booted from the RH9 CD and everything went well till I hit the Auto Partion. It would NOT do squat. I told disk druid to create a / and /boot, which it did, but it would not create a swap. I decided to skip that portion of the install and continue.
**BUT** everything seems beautiful. GRUB comes up at power up, I can select from DOS(winme) or Linux, LINUX detected all my hardware completly, I can surf the internet with Mozilla, heck, i even was able to update my linux OS files from the RedHat Network, (like windows update)
As of now I am still without a swap, according to mount from a terminal window. I am VERY new to LINUX, but have a lot of experience in DOS/Windows, and it boggles me to know that I can run stable with only PHYSICAL memory.
Is there a question somewhere in this or are you just commenting in a 'old' thread?
andysimmons
06-29-2003, 11:40 AM
Originally posted by error27
...also ext2 is faster...
Have you seen any benchmarks to show this? I haven't run any myself, but ext3 is a journaling filesystem which, no matter how full it is, should be comparable to a nearly empty ext2 partition in a speed test.
CrashTestDummy9
06-29-2003, 12:20 PM
Originally posted by cpierce69
I told disk druid to create a / and /boot, which it did, but it would not create a swap. I decided to skip that portion of the install and continue.
A RH9 install I did one time wouldnt create a /swap either .I dont know for sure if this had anything to do with it but I rebooted the install disk and this time chose to create the /boot , then /swap,then / and everything went fine.
The first time it failed was when I created them in this order /boot , / , /swap.
Just a thought.
cpierce69
06-29-2003, 06:21 PM
Originally posted by mdwatts
Is there a question somewhere in this or are you just commenting in a 'old' thread?
This was also from another thread that I posted today. I have searched far and near, and even asked a good source from school, but was not quite sure what to do. My problem was that a swap partition was not created during RH9 install, but is running fine. Since I just installed this about 2 weeks ago, I am very new, and still learning basic command construct. I am not anywhere near admin level. I wanted to share the fact that I am running without a swap (i think) since mount was what I was going by, that might not have been a good place to look. Of course the more I looked, before I posted, the older the versions of RH got, some were not even red hat.
Anyway, could it be that since I already had 4 partitions, 2 for windows, 2 for linux ( root and boot) that 4 is the limit? So when I tried to create swap that would have been 5?
I am going to check this out tonight and post my results.
cpierce69
06-29-2003, 06:28 PM
Originally posted by CrashTestDummy9
A RH9 install I did one time wouldnt create a /swap either .I dont know for sure if this had anything to do with it but I rebooted the install disk and this time chose to create the /boot , then /swap,then / and everything went fine.
The first time it failed was when I created them in this order /boot , / , /swap.
Just a thought.
Thats how mine failed. Another user here had the same problem, with a different OS and setup from me, and his failed. I dont recall him mentioning an order...
The swap was the last thing I attempted to do, and eventually gave up. I have some other things to try, and will post real soon
cpierce69
06-29-2003, 09:47 PM
Originally posted by Yorsh
Are you really running without swap, i think it's a must but im not sure though. mount doesn't show swap.
To Display amount of free and used memory in the system use:
ummm interesting....well you should really create some swap space....
Hayl
06-29-2003, 10:57 PM
Originally posted by error27
people use ext2 if they don't trust new software. but these days ext3 is considerred pretty well tested though.
it's the same file system as ext2 so this is irrelevant. you can even mount an ext3 file system as etx2; it just won't use the journal.
DMR
06-30-2003, 01:28 AM
Originally posted by andysimmons
but ext3 is a journaling filesystem which, no matter how full it is, should be comparable to a nearly empty ext2 partition in a speed test. In terms of recovering from a failure, yes, ext3 will obviously be faster. However, in normal operation you could very well incur a speed/performance penalty if you have have ext3 set to journal both metadata and data.
hardcore
06-30-2003, 02:12 AM
try checking your fstab entry's to see if you do have swap space, from term, run cat /etc/fstab. And its always a good idea to run with swap spa ce, about 128-256 for your system i'd say, cuz its better to be safe than sorry.
hardcore
06-30-2003, 02:23 AM
cpierce69-
check your fstab file to see if swap is listed, cat /etc/ftab, also you may want to run 'free' and see if swap is listed. Aparantly from what i've read, this is a problem with RH9, and a few other distro's. Apparantly it depends on the order of what you partition. I usually partiton /, then swap, then everything else, always works this way for me.
mdwatts
06-30-2003, 07:41 AM
Since you resurfaced 3 previous threads on the same subject and have everyone posting in all three, I have split those 3 threads of their recent postings and then merged all of them together into this one.
Makes it a bit easier to follow...
CrashTestDummy9
07-01-2003, 01:12 AM
Originally posted by cpierce69
My Hard Drive is 40GB and was originally setup for 20GB & 20GB. I thought I was going to make things easier for the setup, so I completly deleted the partions from FDISK, gave C: 15GB gave D:10, AND LEFT THE REMAINING 15GB UNALLOCATED. I figured that LINUX may want to do things its own way. I did a fresh install of WinME and reinstalled my apps and all the windows stuff.
Once ME was done, I booted from the RH9 CD and everything went well till I hit the Auto Partion. It would NOT do squat. I told disk druid to create a / and /boot, which it did, but it would not create a swap. I decided to skip that portion of the install and continue.
**BUT** everything seems beautiful. GRUB comes up at power up, I can select from DOS(winme) or Linux, LINUX detected all my hardware completly, I can surf the internet with Mozilla, heck, i even was able to update my linux OS files from the RedHat Network, (like windows update) I went back to the RH9 CD's and installed SAMBA support and I am able to see my other Windows computers, and share files.
Mount still does not show a swap, but would like to find out how much longer I can go without it. How much RAM do you have?....If its over 768mb theres a good chance you can go forever without a swap.
mdwatts
07-01-2003, 05:46 AM
And another I spit and merged into this thread.
Hope thats all of them. :(
mage492
07-01-2003, 03:16 PM
On the subject of running without swap, I briefly ran a computer with 12 Mb of RAM without swap, briefly.
It was using Tiny Linux (designed for extremely low-ram environments), and I had no problems. Of course, I practically never used the GUI (The one that comes with it is ugly.), but it CAN be done!
It depends on what you do with your computer, though. Do you do a lot of multi-tasking? If so, than you might want one. If you don't, I wouldn't bother. It seems like things are working fine, so far. I wouldn't worry about it until you have problems.
Just my 2 cents on swap!
cpierce69
07-06-2003, 11:00 AM
Originally posted by mdwatts
Since you resurfaced 3 previous threads on the same subject and have everyone posting in all three, I have split those 3 threads of their recent postings and then merged all of them together into this one.
Makes it a bit easier to follow...
Since I created such a flurry and brought back the dead :mad:, i find it only fitting to put some closure to all the madness, swap madness that is.
I gave up on trying to fix a problem that was just bad from the beginning, but boy did I learn alot along the way. I read somewhere (dont have the link, I wrote it down) how a person created 8 partitions on his system, which is personal preference, but my box is an R&D system anyway. I now have installed win2000, DOS (which is win98 dos without windows), WindowsME, and RH9 with a swap. 5GB for WIN2K, 100MB for DOS, 5GB for WinME, 5GB for RH9, a 2GB SHARED partition for all the OS'es to use, and a 256MB swap.
What I have learned that is the most important tool to do such a wild setup was NOT USING any tools from microsoft! Thanks to the help of this websites forums, I did not find exactly what I was looking for, but did find other examples of ways to get more out of a setup.
I also have to mention that the "toolbox" that made this possible was lnx-bbc, which is a boot-able linux-type cd that runs entirely from the CD, without touching the HD, unless you explictly tell it so.:D
The forums can be very helpful if you look through them, my problem at first was looking for an exact match, sometimes reading through partial searches can help.
Just remember the 4 partition limit, and make use of the extended partitions, only fdisk (from linux) will allow setup of this. DOS fdisk is horrible . :confused:
Setup all your partitions FIRST with the correct type, then install all your systems.
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