Problems creating swap file

[MatthiasR]

Hi,

today I burnt my Knoppix 3.7 CD and made it boot. However, so far I cannot use Knoppix because creating the swap file somehow seems not not work.

After detecting and auto-configuring some devices, I get a message saying I have only 47504 KB free RAM (on a 64MB machine). The only way to answer this message is entering OK, whereas the welcome text on the CD (Knoppix/index.html) says that Knoppix needs only 20 MB of RAM - at least for text mode.

After I have entered OK, Knoppix tries to create a DOS swap file. However this fails with the message

/usr/sbin/mkdosswapfile: line 11: usr/bin/id: Eingabe/Ausgabefehler (which means I/O error)

and it seems to be in an endless loop showing this message again and again. It does not even react to any keystrokes (Ctrl-Z, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-D, ...) so the only way for me to get out has been a hardware reset and booting Windows again.

Can anyone give me a clue as to what has gone wrong? Do I need any preliminary actions in order to create a swap file? Or is there a possibility to start in text mode? (I did not find any option "textmode" or "noKDE" or whatever)

Thank you very much,

Matthias

[Doctor]

did you do like "knoppix24 3" to get text only mode?
knoppix26 3 should work if you use that

should have a better chance of figuring out the swap file if you can fiddle in text mode

[MatthiasR]

I already tried "knoppix 2" (should be identical to "knoppix24 2") (which, according to the list of cheatcodes, means "Runlevel 2, Textmode only) with the same result - which really astonished me!

Having read your reply, I tried knoppix26, but it gets stuck when accessing the cdrom drive.

Then I tried knoppix 3 - again same result - I am forced to run mkdosswapfile before getting any prompt, and this loops with the mentioned I/O error.

Regards,

Matthias

[MatthiasR]

Additional informatetion: Knoppix detects 61656 KB (which is considerably less than 64 M) of RAM and then creates a ramdisk of 44212 K on shared memory.

I still cannot understand why I am forced into mkdosswapfile even if I enter "knoppix 2" on the boot prompt.

Regards

Matthias

[MatthiasR]

Now I tried booting "failsafe", and I succeeded in creating two swap files (one on each of my HDD partitions, why?).
Then I could start a KDE session.

So I hoped that Knoppix would detect the swap files on the next boot
However, booting "knoppix" (the normal way) again gives me the same problem as before.

How can I get any clues as to what went wrong in the hardware detection and swap file handling?

Regards,

Matthias

[MatthiasR]

Meanwhile I have found the cause for Knoppix not being able to create or use a swap file: It was the DMA acceleration.

With "knoppix nodma", I can start Knoppix, KDE also starts, and it apparently uses the previously created swap files (One on each of my two partitions).

However, when I try to configure the swap files from KDE, I get an error message "no suitable DOS partitions for creating a swap file".

My "other" OS is Win98, file system Fat32.

What may have gone wrong here?

Regards,

Matthias

[rgarden]

I'm not sure what's going on with your machine. I'm running Knoppix 3.7 on a laptop as a sraight Linux disk, and also on a windows 2000(fat32) desktop with an attached usb drive. I have 1gb swap files on the laptop, and the usb drive, which knoppix sees as /dev/sda2. I used QTParted to create Linix ext3 partitions for programs and data, and then the special "swap file" format for the swap files. that's the only thing I can think of. Are your swap files Formatted by cfdisk or QTParted as "swap file" ? When I boot knoppix, it automatically looks around for an available swap file, I never have to tell it where to go to find one .

[MatthiasR]

Hi rgarden,

I did not use cfdisk, QParted, nor anything like that for the swap files. I just had Knoppix make them in the startup process (this step is called automatically when there is not enough RAM to run KDE). For this purpose, Knoppix uses a built-in shell script named mkdosswapfile, and I do not know its details yet.

As I mentioned earlier, my Knoppix does use the swap file (and automatically detects it on startup), if I start it with the nodma cheatcode. I just cannot configure the swap file from the KDE (you get this menu when clicking on the penguin symbol).

regards,

Matthias