How to install puppy on a wiped hard drive?

[msumner]

I don't understand why no swap partition.

I may be wrong, but I would have thought puppy will run pretty well on that setup with no swap partition, and when kevinwas has the confidence, he can add one later, if he wants. I would be interested to know at what level of ram a swap partition becomes redundant? I would guess somewhere between 256 and 512mb? or will some applications benefit from a swap above this level?
Mike

[Bruce B]

Will, I wrote one of those and its way out of date. Needs updating.

The only rationale I can see for not making some kind of paging mechanism for Linux, is that the person setting up the computer reasons the two following conditions as true:

* The computer has more than sufficient RAM for any anticipated use.
* That Linux will not want or need to do any swapping.

Linux manages resources and RAM exceptionally well. Users with plenty of RAM will probably never miss not having a swap partition. But maybe Linux will, but even at that, it is a good enough operating system, it will manage anyway.

More specifically, I've seen sessions where Linux puts a few megabytes of data on the swap partition, even though nothing happened in the session which should have exceeded the available RAM. If Linux knew there was not place to put the data, it is not going to fall flat on its face, its better designed than that.

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Another scenario, a computer which does not have enough RAM for the tasking at hand and doesn't have a swap file or partition:

In my experience, the following observably happens:

* Linux does not crash, it tries to work with what it has, but can't. Meaning, it can't perform the tasking at hand, something gives.

* The CPU runs hard and I've heard hard drive activity.

* On rebooting you might see a error message about the filesystem and cleaning or clearing a bad block.

[Sage]

msumner : I wrote a guide to Puppy and HW/swap deployment just yesterday!! I know what you mean about information diarrhea, too. What this board needs is excellent moderation and coordination by a dedicated team of knowledgeable gurus - let's me out, then.....

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 8&start=15

[Bruce B]

I would guess somewhere between 256 and 512mb? or will some applications benefit from a swap above this level?
Mike

Various schools of thought. For years I've read that the proper amount of swap partition is 2x the amount of RAM. I don't necessarily concur, but maybe I fail to understand the logic behind the recommendations.

Sage, I think, believes in small swap partitions.

I have 512 MB RAM and I made the swap partition 1024 MB, which I think is too large. Later I resized it to 256 MB. I resized it based on something I read on this forum. Namely, that Puppy is compiled to handle only 1GB RAM. I have no idea if what I read is true, but that's why I resized the swap file. I actually have enough disk space and drives, it doesn't matter to me how much swap space I give.

Sometimes I do some very RAM intensive tasks, like running emulation. In these conditions using about all the RAM I have happens.

[Sage]

The 2 x main memory as a maximum for swap space, still used by all the main distros, is, as Gn2 pointed up in a long discourse some months back, a legacy from 'doze, which as everyone (?) now recognises is a crock.
Without the benefit of any knowledge of SW, I set about determining the swap parameters for Puppy, by experiment alone, on many combinations of systems. This is the basis of my advice in the link, above. Previously, I wrote that unbelievers can have the pleasure of listening to the destruction of their HD if they choose not to adhere to these hard-won guidelines!
All in the name of progress.....

[Flash]

...I have 512 MB RAM and I made the swap partition 1024 MB, which I think is too large. Later I resized it to 256 MB. I resized it based on something I read on this forum. Namely, that Puppy is compiled to handle only 1GB RAM. I have no idea if what I read is true...

It was true, before Barry added the bigram kernel option (or whatever it's called ) several versions ago.

I have 2 GB of RAM and no hard disk drive at all, so no swap at all. It's worked without a hitch for around a year.

RAM is more reliable and uses less power than a hard disk drive. Nowadays, 512 MB of RAM costs less than the cheapest hard disk drive. If you don't need one, why have it? I'd also mention that if privacy is a concern, RAM is preferable to swap memory. See here.

[Flash]

...What this board needs is excellent moderation and coordination by a dedicated team of knowledgeable gurus - let's me out, then.....

How convenient for the rest of us. If you're composing the specs for the ideal forum, add members who always post to the correct forum and never post off-topic or mix several topics in one post.

[kevinwas]

well i have not had an opportunity to play around with partitioning and fragmenting yet today, but will tonight with the above suggestions and see where i end up.

all i did to get it to boot from the disk was take flash's question of where did i get the copy from to heart and re-read some more posts on downloading sources and suggestions. i originally burned the ISO as 16x it was suggested to slow the burn speed down to 8x or even 4x for better quality. i burnt it at 8x and the program ran flawlessly and is very cool.

i cant wait to get to learn and understand more of it and linux in general. thanks again and i will let all who actually care know how the partitioning and formating goes when finished (possibly too confident?...after i give it a try).

On a side note, i am on several non-related forums like this, one of which i answer many of the posted questions, and they are always hard to search through for newbies, many posts are missing crucial info to fully answer the question or to fully understand the answer, and lastly are more often than not carried by the few who actually answer consistently. which is why i truly appreciate those who did answer and offer advice.