How do you enable a swap partition?

DartMol · 03-28-2003, 01:20 AM

What really happened is:

1. My friend mounted a floppy.
2. My friend copied a few files to the mounted floppy.
3. My friend's Mandrake locked up.
4. My friend pressed the computer's restart button.

The next time my friend started his linux, it won't load X.

Another friend told me that the swap partition isn't enabled because the swap partition isn't shown when the command 'mount' is executed.

What are your opinions?

Thanks!

Texicle · 03-28-2003, 01:30 AM

He didn't umount the floppy for one. Also, swap should be enabled at boot up I think. To see if swap is mounted do this as root:

Code:

root@phrankenstein:~# cat /etc/fstab
/dev/hda1        swap             swap        defaults         0   0
/dev/hda2        /                ext2        defaults         1   1
/dev/hdc1        /mnt/hd          ext2        defaults         1   1
/dev/cdrom       /mnt/cdrom       iso9660     noauto,owner,ro  0   0
/dev/fd0         /mnt/floppy      auto        noauto,owner     0   0
none             /dev/pts         devpts      gid=5,mode=620   0   0
none             /proc            proc        defaults         0   0

Also, having NO swap shouldn't cause a problem loading X if he's got enough RAM. Is he getting any error messages? Have him do:

less /var/log/XFree86.0.log

Hope this helps.

lava · 03-28-2003, 12:05 PM

I had this same problem today or yestarday, i wouldn't know, didn't go to sleep. my system locked up because of a tv tuner card. i hit reset button, then i loaded back into mandrake, and then when it was time to load x, a error came up saying it cannot load x. i think i hit the restart button again, then i had to scan hard drive or something to repair it, it said press y and enter, you may lose data i rain it, i i was able to start x, no problem! so just reboot, and press y and enter, if it asks you too, and u should be set!

bahamat · 03-28-2003, 02:05 PM

First of all you have to have a swap partition.

Provided you do you can type swapon or swapoff to enable/disable it respectively.

trickykid · 03-28-2003, 02:13 PM

First off, provide error messages and it might give everyone an idea how to fix your X not loading.

Second bahamat, you don't necessarily need or have to have a swap partition in Linux and I don't think that would affect X not loading either.

Provide more details, give us messages from your log file that Texicle asked about and we should be able to be of more help.