Baslinux mailing list

[James Miller <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>]

On Thu, 7 Aug 2003, Kent Cheung wrote:
>
> I have 3 questions:
> 1) During installing the BL into HD (for booting from HD), I got so many
> "do_try_to free_pages" message. After many many re-try/re-boot, I finally
> get only one message:
>     do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd
> Just curious what it is. I seem that it doesn't do any harm.
>
> 2) After I boot the BL (Both from floppy and HD), the keyboard freeze in the
> login screen. I need to reboot 3 times. YES! 3 times... then the keyboard
> come back.
> I did have the kbd-reset in loadlin line.
>
> 3) How to setup the swap space in Linux. (Sorry, I am new to Linux). First
> of all, should I make the partition as logical or primary in cfdisk? Then
> what should I configure so that BL know there is swap space exist?
>
Steven's the expert here, so take what he says over my advice.  That said,
I can't tell you anything helpful about your point #1 - sorry.  As for
point #2: did you try it *without* the kbd-reset line?  I don't really
know if that would help the problem: I don't use that line myself, but it
just occurs to me by logical deduction as something to try and see if it
affects things positively or negatively.  On your 3rd point, I might be
able to offer more help.  The swap partition ca be *either* primary or
logical - it's up to you.  And as long as you haven't used up your 4
primary partition quota for the drive (only 4 are allowed), there's
nothing constraining you to use a logical/extended partition.  It's
easier to set up a primary partition, so you might want to try it that
way: you'll save yourself an extra step (primary partition creation is one
step, logical/extended partitions involve 2 steps - making the extended
partition, then the logical partition within it).  Anyway, once you've
created the swap partition and noted its location, you can then format it.
Let's say your swap partition is an easy one - /dev/hda2.  You issue the
command
-----------------
mke2fs /dev/hda2
----------------
Just make sure you're doing that with the right partition: you don't want
to hose your main BL partition by formatting it!
Then, you issue the command
-------------------
mkswap /dev/hda2
------------------
In order for the swap  partition to get recognized and used each time you
boot the system, you need to create an entry for it in /etc/fstab.  So
issue the command
----------------
edit /etc/fstab
----------------
If your swap partition is /dev/hda2, then you would add a line that looks
something like this to /etc/fstab:
-------------------------------------
/dev/hda2  swap  swap  defaults  0  0
-------------------------------------
Hope this helps.  Steven, as I mentioned, should be able to answer your
other questions and make any corrections to what I've written.

James