(SOLVED) Swap Fail

kaliman · 2009-01-01 16:02:51

Hi
I'm very impressed with this distro; I just migrated from Ubuntu after a few months with it, since I wanted to learn more about the Linux system. Archlinux really teaches you a lot and lets you customize it.
After a couple of days I got it running the way I wanted, having read the manual and forums through google.
Everything seems ok, except that right while booting it shows that swap failed to activate. On the left says "Activating Swap" and on the far right says "FAIL".
By the way I have 1G Ram. During partition, I assigned 2G to Swap; then to fix this I reinstalled and assigned only 1G, but I still keep seeing that problem; I noticed that the partition program is not exact. Instead of 1G it did a little bit less (1028152 Bytes) and the Ram is actually 1025808, so the swap is "slightly" smaller. I don't know if that has something to do.
So far it hasn't bothered me, I don't really know the implications of this; however, I have another problem, and I don't know if it is related to this:
I was setting up the DE, which is XFCE4, and then added Compiz Fusion. So far so good, but while tweaking it youtube stoped loading videos. Before it was ok, but while I was working with Compiz features it just stoped, I mean, the process circle in the center hangs loading forever and no video; then I tried other sites and nothing, no video. I rebooted and without enabling Compiz, just on XFCE started firefox and youtube and it still hanging without loading the video.
I mention this two problems just in case they might be related, I'm thingking maybe somebody can help me?

Thank You in advance for any help.

Last edited by kaliman (2009-01-01 22:51:28)

bgc1954 · 2009-01-01 16:16:09

I started having a swap problem some time ago, as well. Mine was related to the uuid of the swap partition. For some reason--never found out why--the uuid on my swap changed once in a while and I would lose my swap. I went back to labeling it as /dev/sdaXX, instead of UUID=bunch_of_numbers_and_letters, in my /etc/fstab and it's been working ever since.

And, welcome to Arch, enjoy your stay.

Last edited by bgc1954 (2009-01-01 16:16:46)

kleinlohmi · 2009-01-01 16:20:09

You also might try to activate your swap manually, just in case it is related to the partition. Use "swapon /dev/sdxx" to activate your swap partition. It can be deactivated using "swapoff /dev/sdxx".

kaliman · 2009-01-01 17:15:12

Thanks for the reply, and happy new year.
Here is the output I got from these comands:

bash-3.2# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13 104422 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 14 141 1028160 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3 142 3966 30724312+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 3967 9729 46291297+ 83 Linux
bash-3.2# swapon /dev/sd2
swapon: cannot stat /dev/sd2: No such file or directory

(I this the right way to post the contents of output?)
If you have any idea of how to get flash working again, please let me know. The DVDs play without problem; also, I read somewhere that it might have to do with the firewall? I haven't set any firewall, although I installed iptables when installing Archlinux. Or maybe because of the swap problem?

Last edited by kaliman (2009-01-01 17:16:47)

tdy · 2009-01-01 17:20:23

kaliman wrote:

bash-3.2# swapon /dev/sd2
swapon: cannot stat /dev/sd2: No such file or directory

The device is sda2, not sd2.

A couple things to check before you do that. See if `swapon -s` shows anything. If it does, your swap is already activated and the "FAIL" message is related to something else (e.g. duplicate entries in /etc/fstab). If it doesn't show anything, run `swapon /dev/sda2` and post your fstab.

kaliman · 2009-01-01 17:31:46

You are right!
I'm sorry; however:

bash-3.2# swapon /dev/sda2
swapon: /dev/sda2: Device or resource busy

Then I tried editing the /etc/fstab. I changed the swap lines (there is two lines for each device) from UUID with the bunch of numbers for sda2.
It didn't work, still see the output "Activating Swap FAIL" upon reboot.

Last edited by kaliman (2009-01-01 17:45:03)

tdy · 2009-01-01 17:34:17

kaliman wrote:

bash-3.2# swapon /dev/sda2
swapon: /dev/sda2: Device or resource busy

Based on this message, your swap is already active. Did you read the rest of my post?

kaliman · 2009-01-01 17:48:46

tdy wrote:

kaliman wrote:
bash-3.2# swapon /dev/sda2
swapon: /dev/sda2: Device or resource busy
Based on this message, your swap is already active. Did you read the rest of my post?

Here I got this

[mentisafer@kaliman ~]$ swapon -s
Filename Type Size Used Priority
/dev/sda2 partition 1028152 0 -1

And I do have duplicate entries in my fstab. I'm assuming it's working fine then? Should I just ignore that?

Last edited by kaliman (2009-01-01 17:53:56)

tdy · 2009-01-01 17:54:20

kaliman wrote:

[mentisafer@kaliman ~]$ swapon -s
Filename Type Size Used Priority
/dev/sda2 partition 1028152 0 -1
And I do have duplicate entries in my fstab. I'm assuming it's working fine then? Should I just ignore that?

Ok based on all of that, your swap seems to be fine. The "FAIL" message should go away after removing the duplicates in your fstab (just leave 1 swap entry).

If you still get an error, post your /etc/fstab here.

Last edited by tdy (2009-01-01 18:01:41)

kaliman · 2009-01-01 18:05:10

Alright,
thanks tdy, I fixed the swap problem. I erased all duplicate entries for the sda1 to sda4, and reboot is really fast now.
I shouldn't have posted two problems in the same thread, but I thought they were related; now my second problem (flash on youtube) might be ignored here, so I'm going to post it again as a single one.
Thanks for the help!

Last edited by kaliman (2009-01-01 18:05:57)

kaliman · 2009-01-01 18:48:02

How do I put (SOLVED) in the title?

Jansson · 2009-01-01 18:57:08

Edit the initial post and add it to the subject : ]

developej · 2011-12-18 19:09:33

Hey all,

I too have the 'activate swap [fail]' msg during boot.

$ swapon -s

Filename				Type		Size	Used	Priority
/dev/sda6                               partition	4000148	0	-1

so I guess it's working. I was wondering why I have 'fail' during boot? Here is my fstab

# 
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
#
# <file system> <dir>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
tmpfs           /tmp    tmpfs   nodev,nosuid    0       0
/dev/sda3 /boot ext2 defaults 0 1
/dev/sda5 / ext4 defaults 0 1
/dev/sda6 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/sda7 /home ext4 defaults 0 1
/dev/sdc1 /mnt/usbhdd ntfs-3g defaults          0       0
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs 0 0

No duplicates, but 'fail' msg is there....

edit: oh, and here is the fdisk -l

  Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048      206847      102400    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2          206848   167774207    83783680    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3   *   167774208   167966987       96390   83  Linux
/dev/sda4       167966988  1465149167   648591090    5  Extended
Partition 4 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sda5       167967051   327974387    80003668+  83  Linux
Partition 5 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sda6       327974451   335974757     4000153+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
Partition 6 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sda7       335974821  1465149167   564587173+  83  Linux
Partition 7 does not start on physical sector boundary.

Should I be worried about the 'does not start on physical sector boundary' message?

Last edited by developej (2011-12-18 19:11:08)

ewaller · 2011-12-18 19:25:37

developej,
Welcome to Arch Linux. Note that this thread is almost three years old. A lot can change in three years and the ancient thread is probably no longer relevant to your issue. Mixing old and new data tend to muddy the waters for people looking for solutions to modern problems. Note our policy on old threads.

If you are having a problem, please feel free to start a new thread and refer back to this thread as reference.
I am going to go ahead and close this ancient thread.
Thanks.

Last edited by ewaller (2011-12-18 19:26:56)

Arch Linux

#1 2009-01-01 16:02:51

(SOLVED) Swap Fail

#2 2009-01-01 16:16:09

Re: (SOLVED) Swap Fail

#3 2009-01-01 16:20:09

Re: (SOLVED) Swap Fail

#4 2009-01-01 17:15:12

Re: (SOLVED) Swap Fail

#5 2009-01-01 17:20:23

Re: (SOLVED) Swap Fail

#6 2009-01-01 17:31:46

Re: (SOLVED) Swap Fail

#7 2009-01-01 17:34:17

Re: (SOLVED) Swap Fail

#8 2009-01-01 17:48:46

Re: (SOLVED) Swap Fail

#9 2009-01-01 17:54:20

Re: (SOLVED) Swap Fail

#10 2009-01-01 18:05:10

Re: (SOLVED) Swap Fail

#11 2009-01-01 18:48:02

Re: (SOLVED) Swap Fail

#12 2009-01-01 18:57:08

Re: (SOLVED) Swap Fail

#13 2011-12-18 19:09:33

Re: (SOLVED) Swap Fail

#14 2011-12-18 19:25:37

Re: (SOLVED) Swap Fail

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