Slackware 9 Creating new swap partitions after installation without destroying data
 

Hi, my name is Aaron and I am using Slackware 9.0 on an 18XL20 compaq presario laptop (6 GB HD and 64 mb physical ram). I am relatively new to linux and uncommon data size units such as cylinders and blocks. So, upon being asked to specify them on installation, I freaked out and asked a friend, who ran various *nix systems to help me out.

I assumed that his knowledge was competent, but after running my system for a month or so, I began to be plauged by gross memory shortages. It turns out that my swap partition was grossly undersized. Instead of the recommended default of 128 MB (double physical memory) it was instead a paltry 24 MB.

My question is whether there is a way to create new swap partitions using the free space on my hard disk, keeping the remaining data intact, and if so, how I would go about it (assuming minimum knowlege of console usage.)

Your help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you :)
-Aaron

If you have unallocated disk space i.e. space that is not part of a partition you can use fdisk, cfdisk or parted to create a swap partition. Next you want to format it, activate it and then add it to your /etc/fstab file. I do not have any good tutorials on how to create a partition but here is the man pages for cfdisk.

http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/alpha/cfdisk.txt

http://www.justlinux.com/nhf/Filesys...lesystems.html


linux can use multiple swap partitions and swap files (8 total). So need no need to remove the existing one.

If you do not have unallocated disk space and do not want to resize then use this method:

http://www.justlinux.com/nhf/Filesys..._Swapping.html