Swap space issue with two hard drives

[Shvetal_Patel]

Hi,

I am trying to install mandrake on a Primary Master Hard drive and want to put the swap partition on a Secondary Master Hard drive. But during install of Mandrake 9.0, the system just hangs after going through the 15-20% of package install.

 

On one instance I even received an ldconfig error. But nothing is duplicated or atleast the errors that I have received have never before been seen by me. The machine would just freeze up on me and leave me with no choice but to reboot.

However with the swap space on the same drive I am able to install without any trouble.

 

My question: Is it possible to install the software with the above config. or do I have to install the system with swap space residing on the same hard drive as the root and other partition. And if so can we move the swap partition to another drive after the install and how ?

 

Thanks.

[bvc]

Welcome!

Should work....since its not either the installer, or kernel has a prob with your hd or there's a bug in the installer.

 

To do it after install use diskdrake (from a terminal) or get to diskdrake in the Mandrake Control Center (mcc)>Mount Points>hd.

[Shvetal_Patel]

Thanks bvc,

But I am a bit confused by your answer..... Could you be more specific.

I have tried the install of 9.0 something like 6-times. At first I suspected that somehow the hard drive was damaged. However after formatting it with MS-Dos the drive became available, just fine. Some times the drive would just hang during the format of ext3 partitions. At another time when I chose the text install I almost got through the install except that X server install crashed and I was left with linuxEBDA too big error. I researched that and found that this error had occured on my system due to the fact that I had turned the system off after X install crash.

So I began again.

Now I have the system up with the swap and other partitions on the same disk. I would like to move the swap to another disk. How can this be accomplished?

Again Thanks for your response.

[Pzatch]

How is your hardware setup? Does Mandrake recognise your second harddrive at all?

[bvc]

Like a msdos prompt we have terminal emulators. Some call them consoles which isn't correct. The console would be in runlevels 1 and 3 before 5 which is X (or GUI), 6 is reboot. In kde, in the taskbar (kicker) there's a monitor icon which will open konsole ( :roll: it's a terminal emulator). If you type

su <hit Enter>

enter_roots_password <hit Enter>

diskdrake <hit Enter>

 

looks like this

[bvc@localhost bvc]$ su

Password:

[root@localhost bvc]# diskdrake

notice my login went from bvc to root.....I can now destroy anything .....kidding, well you can, but don't be afraid of it.

 

This will open the disktool called diskdrake. The easier/normal way for someone coming from windows is to go to the Start Menu (K-Menu)> Configuration> Mandrake Control Center. A popup window will appear asking for roots password, enter it and click OK, then go to Mount Points> Harddisk (I think in 9.0). Self explainitory from there, just delete and add as you desire (within reason) and you might want to click the button that says "toggle to expert mode".

 

Let us know if you need anything else...and I hope this helps more!

[Shvetal_Patel]

Thank you both for your replies.

I have done the exact things that you mentioned with diskdrake and the swap was moved.

But I thought the system should speed up if the swap is moved to a different hard drive than the data drive. Also both HD's are on different controllers. How ever I am yet to notice any performace increase instead I think I am getting degradation in terms of performance, after having moved the swap space.

Can this be happening ??? :roll:

The other issue was during install the diskdrake sees both drives but the install would not go forward if the swap was on a different drive...refer to my original posting.

Thanks again.

[chef_kunal]

why dont you put out here your exact motherboard and pc configuration. I have swap on the secondary slave , and yes there does seem to be a minor performance gain. But then i have enough memory so i hardly ever see the swap file used.

[Shvetal_Patel]

I am running Mandrake 9.0 on a Compaq Presario 4850. It's a Pentium III 300 Mhz machine.

176 Meg Ram, ATI 3D Rage LT Pro, 3Com nic, compaq monitor, quantum HD 6.4 Gb on Secondary Controller, Maxtor 6.2 Gb on Primary Master and Compaq DVD Rom on Slave. Win Modem with Lucent Chipset. and an integrated sound card with ESS 1887 Chipset.

 

The Machine freezes up a lot too with the swap on a different drive I have just moved it back. I shall report on the progress in a day or two.

 

Please let me know if you need further info...

[Cannonfodder]

Do you have the 2 drives on different IDE's? If they are on the same, then it would not be a good thing. Only one drive can communicate with the bus at a time in that scenerio. If they are on separate IDE's then both drives can work at the same time.

[Mandriva-user]

Hi every one!

 

I use winxp on 60 gb,setup as master and 120gb part win98 other part MD9.0 with swap partition with dvd,cd-rw,250mb zip drive and it did not even crashes or what ever.I`m habby with it but sorry can`t help because it work I don`t why.

 

Mandrake-user :D

[Falcdragon]

What every you to make sure you do not have 2 partions formated as Linux Swap at the same time!!!

It causes Major problems if you try to reboot the system while it's in that state.

[bvc]

I think what you meant to say was...make sure you done have 2 swaps it your fstab without a pri=<value>. Diskdrake won't even allow you to create a second swap (didn't let me) and it sure won't put them in fstab. :)

[Cannonfodder]

hmmm, maybe it won't let you make 2 on the same drive I wonder? I recently moved my swap from my linux drive to my windows drive in an attempt to gain the imaginary speed boost we all crave, I had to make a second swap and reboot before I could use it.

[bvc]

Yes, on the same drive.

I just did it in 9.1....couldn't in 9.0 :roll: I had to because of

http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php?t=3994

I couldn't resize my current...not enough ram I guess...so now I have two.

[Steve Scrimpshire]

I just moved my swap from /dev/hdb to /dev/hda (my running 9.1 is on /dev/hdb). It made the swap /dev/hda10 and added the correct entry into /etc/fstab. However, it doesn't enable swap, at first telling me that /dev/hda10 does not exist, but it does:

# ls -l /dev/hda10

brw-rw-rw-    1 root     disk       3,  10 Jun  8 20:01 /dev/hda10

 

Now it tells me Invalid Argument:

# swapon -a

swapon: /dev/hda10: Invalid argument

 

/etc/fstab:

/dev/hdb1 / reiserfs notail 1 2

none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0

/dev/hdb6 /home reiserfs notail 1 2

/dev/hda9 /mnt/81home reiserfs notail 1 2

/dev/hda7 /mnt/81root reiserfs notail 1 1

/dev/hda8 /mnt/81usr reiserfs notail 1 2

# none /mnt/cdrom supermount dev=/dev/hdc,fs=auto,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0

/dev/scd0 /mnt/cdrom auto user,umask=0,exec,codepage=850,ro,noauto 0 0

/dev/scd1 /mnt/cdrom2 auto user,umask=0,exec,codepage=850,ro,noauto 0 0

# none /mnt/cdrom2 supermount dev=/dev/scd0,fs=auto,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0

none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=auto,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0

/dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c vfat iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0,defaults 0 0

/dev/hda5 /mnt/win_d vfat iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0,defaults 0 0

/dev/hda6 /mnt/win_e vfat iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0,defaults 0 0

none /proc proc defaults 0 0

/dev/hdb5 /usr reiserfs notail 1 2

/dev/hdb8 /usr/local reiserfs defaults 1 2

# /dev/hdb8 /usr/local ext3 defaults 1 2

/dev/hdb7 /var reiserfs notail 1 2

/dev/hda10 swap swap defaults 0 0

 

Does it have something to do with devfs being mounted?

How can I fix it?

 

Edit: I had made the new swap using Diskdrake. Opening a terminal and issuing the command:

 

mkswap /dev/hda10

 

fixed my problem. I thought diskdrake does that.