Knoppix accessing HDD for swap space??

[Li Gwai Lo]

I've been noticing that whenever Konqueror starts Java, or whenever I run Mozilla at all, the hard drive access light starts flashing. I am running it on an old PC, K6-2/400 with 128Mb of memory, so I wouldn't be surprised if it is running out of memory, but still. . . .

Is Konqueror using the hard drive for swap space? If so, how can it be safe??

[robwelch100]

Do you have knoppix installed or running from CD? Linux uses the hard drive for swap space. You should have a dedicated linux swap partition on a hard drive. Windows basically does the same but it calls it "virtual memory" and can be specified as well. This is not a new concept. It may be new to the casual windows user who has never broken from the microsoft mold but power users are very familiar. Oh and swap space is safe and frees up memory for other tasks. Hope this helps

[Li Gwai Lo]

Ok, I see that I didn't provide nearly enough information. My bad. I probably should have mentioned that I have an MSCS, did systems programming on IBM mainframes to pay my way through grad school, and have done a sh*tload of application programming on UNIX (and Linux) systems for the last twenty years. My thesis was on RAID, which was a new and hot topic back in the early 1980's. Now that we've established that I am not a totally clueless luser. . . .

I am running Knoppix 3.3 from CD. It is being run on an older machine that has Win98SE installed. The hard drive doesn't -- repeat does NOT -- have a separate Linux swap partition on it. It has two FAT32 partitions, both of which are filled with my files and programs. "Filled", as in, there's about 50Mb left, just barely enough to boot Win98SE.

The partitions aren't mounted. Knoppix obviously detects that they exist, but it shouldn't be writing to them or even reading them.

Which is why it is so unnerving to me to see the drive-access light flashing. Knoppix isn't installed on the HD, it doesn't have a swap partition, and the partitions aren't mounted, so: is it using swap space on the drive despite all that? With the access light flashing like mad, I am more than a little concerned that Knoppix is merrily overwriting my data.

[eadz]

There is also an option to have a swap file on a fat32 partition when you boot up.. I think that if you have under 96megs of ram it will ask if you want to make a swap file.

[Li Gwai Lo]

Thanks, Eadz; this machine has 128Mb, and Knoppix never asked -- I guess I just have to hope it's only writing to the empty spots. :-/

Oh well. Gonna get an Asus Terminator (hopefully the T2 if they release one for the Athlon -- has an AGP slot) soon, then I can just install Linux permanently.

[A. Jorge Garcia]

Are you sure its not cdrom drive access lights you're seeing?

Regards,