I've installed Slack-9.1 numerous times on this machine (P2 @ 500 MHz w/ two 3 GB IDE hard drives), but just recently it started taking FOREVER to format and check the swap partitions! Here's my proecdure:
[list=1][*]Boot to CD-ROM[*]Use cfdisk to create partitions:
/dev/hda1 -- 16 MB ext2 (/boot)
/dev/hda2 -- 256 MB swap
/dev/hda3 -- ~2.5 GB ext2 (/)
/dev/hdb1 -- 256 MB swap
/dev/hdb2 -- ~2.5 GB ext2 (/usr/local)[*]Start setup[*]Follow procedure[*]Confirm the swap partitions[*]Wait for hours for them to format[/list=1]

Why would my machine all of a sudden take forever and a day to format 512 MB of disk space?!

To check your partitioning scheme, command fdisk -l

Did you command mkswap /dev/hda2 to format it?

Not sure why its taking it forever to format but I am going to ask since it appears this will be used as a desktop type machine, why are you creating two swap partitions on two separate drives? You really only need one swap on one drive probably not exceeding 200 megs.

No, I used the Add Swap Partitions command in Slack-9.1 Setup. Using this command doesn't allow you to skip fsck'ing the drive. I've tried skipping it once (planning on just adding them to /etc/fstab manually), but wound up with out-of-memory errors during package installation.

There are multiple reasons -- probably unfounded -- why I have swap on both drives. First, I had been trying to install Linux from Scratch, but since my hard drives weren't large enough (I was always about 500 megs too short) I abandoned that idea; I had both drives set up with about seven partitions each. When I decided to reinstall Slackware I said "Screw This" and just made big partitions. Not efficient at all, really.

Secondly, it's a hangover from Windows. Putting the pagefile on a different physical volume from Windows and/or your most RAM-intensive apps is quite obviously much more efficient than keeping the pagefile on the same volume, because both drives can run concurrently, avoiding thrashing. Splitting between two volumes is even more efficient because now Windows can use either volume for swap space.

Slackware boinked out cause it uses swap during the install. If there is none well, that's why it crapped out on you. Its required to setup Slackware.

I can see your reasons to split them up for Windows use as well but in Linux, most of the time with suffecient amount of RAM, its not even going to be used even. Linux is just way better at utilizing RAM and memory than Windows is.

Cheers.

Yep, learned that the hard way when it ran out of memory. There really should be an option to format the partition, not check it -- mkswap itself took about 1 second when I tested it. I don't care if there are 27 million messages in the setup program recommending against skipping the "checking for bad blocks"; it would probably still be better than having to wait overnight to format 512 MB of space.