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keesan AT iamjlamb.com wrote:
>
> I get some vertical green stripes and a crash.  I cannot
> reboot either.  I presume this means it ran out of RAM.

Running swap would have probably avoided the crash
(although you can't be sure when Xvesa is involved).

> I do not have the swap file unzipped.  

That is bad.

> I thought you could not swap to hard drive without a swap 
> file or partition.  Please explain, Steven, why I hear the
> hard drive when trying to load too much at once?

If there is a swap file/partition available the kernel will 
swap memory from RAM to disk (and back) as required.  Without 
swap, the kernel is forced to purge memory and reload the 
original files from the HD.  This is less efficient and
less stable.

Cheers,
Steven