Pdaxrom, 3100 & Swap

[Sheila]

I recently installed pdaXrom on my 3100, but reformatted my HD into one ext3 partition. I ran into a situation where my Z crashed as I purposefully pushed it as hard as I could and it destroyed my mycalendar.ics files. Is there a swap file somewhere else, or should I repartition and make one, or is it possible to mount a directory as a swap file so it's dynamic in size?
- If I have to repartition I would like to do it now before I customize too much.

[T-RuX]

Hi! You can do a file and use this for swap
Do iT:
# dd if=/dev/zero of=swapfile bs=1M count=[the megabytes what you like...]
# mkswap swapfile
and you have a new swapfile... you can mount it with #swapon swapfile and umount with swapoff swapfile
easy

Chao!

[Sheila]

you can mount it with #swapon swapfile and umount with swapoff swapfile
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=102141\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

This is great!

[jcabrer]

you can mount it with #swapon swapfile and umount with swapoff swapfile
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=102141\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

This is great!
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=102146\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

If you are at all interested in the best preformance, a swap partition is faster than a swap file.  Granted, it does not give you the flexibility as far as changing things later on, but if you create a 512MB swap, I doubt you will ever need anything bigger.

[Sheila]

If you are at all interested in the best preformance, a swap partition is faster than a swap file.  Granted, it does not give you the flexibility as far as changing things later on, but if you create a 512MB swap, I doubt you will ever need anything bigger.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=102163\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

I'm going to setup a script to make a temp file when necessary. I think I'll rarely need it, and I'm really not that keen on losing all the HD space for something I won't use that often. If I'm using a swapfile anyhow, I recognize the performance is subpar anyhow...

[jcabrer]

If you are at all interested in the best preformance, a swap partition is faster than a swap file.  Granted, it does not give you the flexibility as far as changing things later on, but if you create a 512MB swap, I doubt you will ever need anything bigger.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=102163\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

I'm going to setup a script to make a temp file when necessary. I think I'll rarely need it, and I'm really not that keen on losing all the HD space for something I won't use that often. If I'm using a swapfile anyhow, I recognize the performance is subpar anyhow...
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=102170\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

also be aware that a swapfile *MUST* be contiguous (no fragments).  In other words, the swap file you create on a partition already populated with files can only be as large as your biggest free area on the partition.  Of course you can also create multiple smaller swapfiles to compensate.

[ShiroiKuma]

you can mount it with #swapon swapfile and umount with swapoff swapfile
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=102141\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

This is great!
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=102146\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

If you are at all interested in the best preformance, a swap partition is faster than a swap file.  Granted, it does not give you the flexibility as far as changing things later on, but if you create a 512MB swap, I doubt you will ever need anything bigger.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=102163\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

How do you create this partition on the Zaurus with the CF in? Do I have to fdisk or something and reformat the whole card?

And can you say percentage wise how faster would having a 512MB swap partition be in comparison with a 512MB swap file, i.e. is it worth it, or is the difference 0.5% or something?

[Sheila]

also be aware that a swapfile *MUST* be contiguous (no fragments).  In other words, the swap file you create on a partition already populated with files can only be as large as your biggest free area on the partition.  Of course you can also create multiple smaller swapfiles to compensate.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=102177\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, is there a command line tool that can tell me how big any contiguous free area on my HD is? Even if I had that information, would making a file automatically use that space, or might the swapfile I make still be fragmented?
Would a fast SD card (which would be easier to reformat) give as good performance as the MicroDrive?
I've always followed suggestions that a swap file should be 2X the available RAM. Would it be a complete waste of time to make a 128MB swap file? A 50% increase I figure should be plenty... I infer from your post, I could then, if I needed, create multiple smaller swapfiles. Do I just run swapon specifying various partitions and created swapfiles? i.e. I don't have to add a numerical suffix anywhere?
Thanks for this very useful info.   I thought SD prices would be way cheaper by now!