OESF Portables Forum

General Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: ffelgenh on March 03, 2004, 11:34:53 am

Title: swapon not working
Post by: ffelgenh on March 03, 2004, 11:34:53 am

swapon is not working as espected from howto.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/home/root/swapfile bs=1024 count=8192

mkswap /home/root/swapfile

swapon /home/root/swapfile

swapon: illegal argument

free shows zero swap space

what went wrong?

Title: swapon not working
Post by: derekp on March 03, 2004, 05:25:22 pm

Which model zaurus are your running?  If you have the 5600 or above, they use a jffs2 filesystem for /home, which I think doesn\'t allow swap.

Title: swapon not working
Post by: ffelgenh on March 03, 2004, 05:33:37 pm

Yes 5600. That means I have to put the swap on a SD or CF card I have to buy then.

I would prefer a SD memory card  because then I can still use the CF slot for bluetooth
and WLAN. Any suggestion for a SD I can use with my 5600.

Title: swapon not working
Post by: derekp on March 03, 2004, 05:51:22 pm

I\'ve had good luck with Lexar cards on my 5500.  Stay away from sandisk SD\'s (there CF\'s are ok).
However, keep in mind that flash media has a limited number of write cycles (usually about 100,000).  That may seem like a lot, but if you end up with a heavy load where your system is swapping a lot, you can use up those write cycles fairly quickly.  If you want to use your zaurus for anything heavy enough to require a swapfile, then you may want to investigate getting a microdrive for your CF slot.  These are faster, and don\'t have the limit on the number of writes you can do.

Title: swapon not working
Post by: ffelgenh on March 03, 2004, 05:57:58 pm

The Problem is, I connect via CF bluetooth to the Internet and opera needs a lot memory
when surfing normal web sites. Why stay away from SD?

Title: swapon not working
Post by: derekp on March 03, 2004, 06:14:03 pm

Quote

The Problem is, I connect via CF bluetooth to the Internet and opera needs a lot memory
when surfing normal web sites. Why stay away from SD?

Because the Microdrives are only available as CF devices (Microdrives are actual hard drives, shrunk down to the size of a CF card.  They usually run about $165 for a 2.2 gig model).  An SD card or a regular CF flash card has the limited number of write cycles available, which may wear out too quickly (and SD\'s are really slow).  The microdrive, being an actual hard drive, doesn\'t have that problem.  Of course, if your applications tend to create large datasets that aren\'t written to that much, then you may be able to get away with using an SD card.  I\'ve heard from some people that they haven\'t had problems in more than a year of having swap on SD, while others have fried an SD card after only a few weeks.

BTW, there is also a bluetooth adapter that hooks up to the zaurus\'s serial port, if that\'s an option for you (I think it\'s called the Air cable or something like that).

Title: swapon not working
Post by: CoreyC on March 03, 2004, 06:18:05 pm

Quote

Why stay away from SD?

Enough people have had problems with sandisk SD cards that they are usually recommended against.

I have a 128mb sandisk and a 256mb Lexar and can not tell the difference.

edit:  Sorry, misunderstood your question.  Read that post above mine, he knows what he is talkin about

Title: swapon not working
Post by: havoc on March 03, 2004, 07:39:20 pm

here\'s how i created swap on a Panasonic SD card.

http://www.galacticslacker.com/perl-bin/re...20card&expand=3 (http://www.galacticslacker.com/perl-bin/re?folder=Zaurus%20SL-5600/Creating%20swap%20on%20SD%20or%20CF%20card&expand=3)

Title: swapon not working
Post by: ericglam on March 09, 2004, 12:02:46 am

Do not forget to logon as root on the 5600 before you try to create a swapfile by typing:

   su root

The file system for /home will not support a swap file;  you need a SD or CF card.