Yes, you are quite right Guest. I made adjustment in rc.local, removed the # and finally got a change in MUT-
And this is what I discovered:(many boots switching back and forth between swapon and swapoff in rc.local)
'swapon' in rc.local=a swap flag/toggle 'Swap Off' in MUT
and correspondingly:
'swapoff in rc.local = 'Swap On' in MUT,
indicating that the toggle for the 'swap' in MUT is a "command" button-
meaning clicking 'Swap Off' turns an active swap off and clicking 'Swap On' turns an inactive swap on.
Do you agree?
Thanks again for your help. I have gained a substantial degree of mastery the past few days from the help from the various puppy posters.
Soon I will give a small report on how booting a machine below 55 degrees F can give a false Grub error 18.javascript:emoticon(':o')
Verify that swap is being used by Pup? Ok, sortof solved.
I'm sure all that you guys are correct, but the whole thread has me totally confused. Before I edited rc.local to include swapon /dev/hdax, the boot list contained an item suggesting that swap was auto-mounted and MUT showed a toggle between Use Swap & Swap Off. Now, it shows swap and boxed Swap Off.
Does that mean that, previously, my swap had NOT been in use?
It would be very helpful if one of our beloved moderators could either reorganise this entire thread (feel free to delete anything I said, I'm an outsider!) and/or produce a Simple Guide that can be called from the forum heading. Perhaps BK could make what must be quite trivial coding mods. to incorporate swap activation. It is my view that, despite the history of Puppy as a live CD, its application to resurrecting old kit now transcends those original intentions, making an invaluable contribution to waste reduction, recycling and landfill avoidance.
Does that mean that, previously, my swap had NOT been in use?
It would be very helpful if one of our beloved moderators could either reorganise this entire thread (feel free to delete anything I said, I'm an outsider!) and/or produce a Simple Guide that can be called from the forum heading. Perhaps BK could make what must be quite trivial coding mods. to incorporate swap activation. It is my view that, despite the history of Puppy as a live CD, its application to resurrecting old kit now transcends those original intentions, making an invaluable contribution to waste reduction, recycling and landfill avoidance.
The last line in my boot entry now is "adding swap...."
MUT indicates swap and Swap Off [boxed]. I had not noticed until you pointed out the box. As in all other boxed words in MUT(check them out) a box is a "button" ,or toggle, to click to do the action indicated by the word, i.e. Scan, Rox, Swap Off, Close and Eject. All have boxes. When swap, like root /, is unboxed it indicates the current condition, when you click a boxed Swap Off a boxed Swap On appears in it's place(no more swap), as the button to turn swap back on.
It appears that your swap has been off, unless there is another auto swap that we do not kow about.
I wholeheartedly agree with you about the importance of getting these older machines back in action. Have you any idea how much oil was used to produce these computors? they are still good and it is highly irresponsible to throw them away for the sake of short term profits(gotta pay the bankers). As an american (Texas national) I have seen, more than most, the absurdity of the throw away society. It makes me sick to see this condition, and if these folks that develop the mini-live CDs, puppy and others, especially slax, would also develop a pure install like so many people are wanting, then that would contribute significantly to reduce waste and save some energy from making new machines uneccessarly.
MUT indicates swap and Swap Off [boxed]. I had not noticed until you pointed out the box. As in all other boxed words in MUT(check them out) a box is a "button" ,or toggle, to click to do the action indicated by the word, i.e. Scan, Rox, Swap Off, Close and Eject. All have boxes. When swap, like root /, is unboxed it indicates the current condition, when you click a boxed Swap Off a boxed Swap On appears in it's place(no more swap), as the button to turn swap back on.
It appears that your swap has been off, unless there is another auto swap that we do not kow about.
I wholeheartedly agree with you about the importance of getting these older machines back in action. Have you any idea how much oil was used to produce these computors? they are still good and it is highly irresponsible to throw them away for the sake of short term profits(gotta pay the bankers). As an american (Texas national) I have seen, more than most, the absurdity of the throw away society. It makes me sick to see this condition, and if these folks that develop the mini-live CDs, puppy and others, especially slax, would also develop a pure install like so many people are wanting, then that would contribute significantly to reduce waste and save some energy from making new machines uneccessarly.
OK, but let's not lose all these gems about swap creation, formatting and activation. They need collation. The point is that Barry's masterpiece has priceless, if unintended, spin-off. His implementation of ramdisk, efficiently coded apps, yielding unprecedented speed, can be transferred onto old hardware. This also meets with his stated strategies. We haven't heard from the guru, in person, yet.
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Scorch
I'd like to chime in here... for me simply creating the swap file (logical hda5) and formatting it with a console command...
mkswap /dev/hda5
was ALL I had to do. The swap partition is mounted and enabled with each reboot according to the MUT. I did NOT have to use swapon or edit the rc.local file at all.
PIII 500Mhz, 2GigHD, 160Meg
mkswap /dev/hda5
was ALL I had to do. The swap partition is mounted and enabled with each reboot according to the MUT. I did NOT have to use swapon or edit the rc.local file at all.
PIII 500Mhz, 2GigHD, 160Meg
I'd like to challenge assuming a P-II computer is underpowered; I'd say that faster computers are over-powered for most normal uses. And a 1GB hard drive is a very large playfield from the point of view of Puppy.
Swap may not make things faster; in general using swap makes things slower. The value of swap is that it makes it possible to do things that can't be done otherwise, with limited real ram. But try your real applications first with no swap. If you can do what you need to do, you might be better off without swap. (Also, if you are messing with multiple drives, consider putting the swap on a separate physical drive for maximum speed. But multiple drives increases your power consumption, so again make sure you are really getting some benefit from the added complication.)
How much ram do these computers you are trying to rescue have? Memory is pretty cheap these days, and a PII should be able to easily accomodate some cheap 128-256MB memory, plenty for Puppy to do lots of tricks.
I've never used swap, and obviously the MUT icons are a source of confusion that should be improved... In general Partview seems like a good tool to quickly view all mounted partitions.
Swap may not make things faster; in general using swap makes things slower. The value of swap is that it makes it possible to do things that can't be done otherwise, with limited real ram. But try your real applications first with no swap. If you can do what you need to do, you might be better off without swap. (Also, if you are messing with multiple drives, consider putting the swap on a separate physical drive for maximum speed. But multiple drives increases your power consumption, so again make sure you are really getting some benefit from the added complication.)
How much ram do these computers you are trying to rescue have? Memory is pretty cheap these days, and a PII should be able to easily accomodate some cheap 128-256MB memory, plenty for Puppy to do lots of tricks.
I've never used swap, and obviously the MUT icons are a source of confusion that should be improved... In general Partview seems like a good tool to quickly view all mounted partitions.
Live CD and No Swap
Thanks for the suggestion, ketd, yes, if you can add more memory, that will be a better solution than use of swap partition.
Scorch, you must be using live CD. Puppy installed to hard disk behaves differently (it does not use swap automatically).
Scorch, you must be using live CD. Puppy installed to hard disk behaves differently (it does not use swap automatically).
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ninjabob7
(I have been taken the appending of labels such as SOLVED to indicate that herein you might actually find answers to the problem mentioned, not just a discussion among the equally affflicted and suffering.)
I guess I do feel it should imply that there are not only answers, but that they actually worked -- and preferably that the person with the original problem thinks their problem is solved/resolved. (I haven't read this thread closely enough to have an opinion in this instance.)
I guess I do feel it should imply that there are not only answers, but that they actually worked -- and preferably that the person with the original problem thinks their problem is solved/resolved. (I haven't read this thread closely enough to have an opinion in this instance.)
Use of Two Hard Drives (/dev/hda, /dev/hdb)
You've capped your original post with a clear set of answer here, so no need to worry when the discussion extends into another angle (that opens another "unsolved" region 
)
Two swap partitions (one in each drive) may be unnecessary. Keeping it in /dev/hdb could be useful as, should you decide later to just stick to a live CD, your data drive (with swap partition) can be used as a single drive (it will then become /dev/hda from being /dev/hdb or second drive).
Most people are happy numbering the main (ext2 or linux) partition as first, say /dev/hdb1, and the next, smaller one as swap (/dev/hdb2). These old machines are not to be used as cutting-edge devices (ex., high-speed server) so the location of the swap partition should not be critical - what is critical perhaps is ease of understanding for the user.
)Two swap partitions (one in each drive) may be unnecessary. Keeping it in /dev/hdb could be useful as, should you decide later to just stick to a live CD, your data drive (with swap partition) can be used as a single drive (it will then become /dev/hda from being /dev/hdb or second drive).
Most people are happy numbering the main (ext2 or linux) partition as first, say /dev/hdb1, and the next, smaller one as swap (/dev/hdb2). These old machines are not to be used as cutting-edge devices (ex., high-speed server) so the location of the swap partition should not be critical - what is critical perhaps is ease of understanding for the user.
If you have Linux installed on a hard drive you can put the swap partition anywhere, I would suggest you make it the second primary partition on the hard drive.
The kernel only needs to locate the swap partition so that it can utilize it to swap pages in and out.
If you have a second hard drive you can make it one big partition and format it as ext2 or ext3 then mount it in /mnt as /dev/hdb1.
You could put an entry in /etc/fstab to allow it to be mounted at bootup and just access it through /mnt/hdb1 with a symbolic link and a desktop shortcut.
The kernel only needs to locate the swap partition so that it can utilize it to swap pages in and out.
If you have a second hard drive you can make it one big partition and format it as ext2 or ext3 then mount it in /mnt as /dev/hdb1.
You could put an entry in /etc/fstab to allow it to be mounted at bootup and just access it through /mnt/hdb1 with a symbolic link and a desktop shortcut.
Takilla,
I encourage you to contribute to the wiki -- just Plunge Ahead with whatever you think you know now, add to it later -- we need more participants over there.
Don't worry too much about this thread. The whole purpose of the Forum is to be a discussion, a very useful format for all potential current and future readers with similar interests. Ultimately, each thread wanders where it will, lives or dies as a cooperative outcome.
I've refurbed many similar Dell GX. (Not with Puppy.) I still think your best bet is buy ram on eBay, bump them all up to at least 128MB, and forget swap entirely. Your questions about the best ways to use two 1GB drives in each computer are very interesting, and it will be great to get the benefit of what you learn over time -- but again, I think it is kind of overkill, one 1GB drive is plenty to do a lot with Puppy. I'd strongly encourage you to set up a few sample computers with 128MB and just one 1GB drive, no swap, and just see how well they do, what limitations they have in real use, if any!
Your intended uses are very simple, I think you can keep your computers very simple and serve those needs very well. In fact, I think your main challenges are how to keep junk from accumulating on the computers, and the more storage is available, the more this can happen. You want a very simple way to restore to a base state after anything happens. Personally, I'd be very tempted not to install to HD at all, just to run off CDs, which in the case of Puppy you can easily remaster to be whatever you want. Why would you ever want to allow users to store anything on Hard Drive, from one day to the next? They can store any personal files on floppy, on USB drives, or on the Internet... What about having no Hard Drive at all, or not having it mapped/available, or ONLY formatting it as swap, so nothing carries over from day to day?
What we really need is to hear from someone with Experience using Puppy for a large multi-workstation puplic-access type use.
I have never heard of using more than one swap partition. Best performance would be to put it on a drive least likely to get other accesses while swap is being used.
Partition Magic is the best tool I've found for manually making partitions any way you want them. Haven't used it with Linux partitions.
Ghost is the best tool for volume replicating whole hard drive filesystems. Again, have not used it for Linux.
I really think that your biggest issues are long-term admin and maintenance, and there is no substitute for actual experience. After you have been taught by reality for a year in this specific context, then you'll know just how you want to do things...
I encourage you to contribute to the wiki -- just Plunge Ahead with whatever you think you know now, add to it later -- we need more participants over there.
Don't worry too much about this thread. The whole purpose of the Forum is to be a discussion, a very useful format for all potential current and future readers with similar interests. Ultimately, each thread wanders where it will, lives or dies as a cooperative outcome.
I've refurbed many similar Dell GX. (Not with Puppy.) I still think your best bet is buy ram on eBay, bump them all up to at least 128MB, and forget swap entirely. Your questions about the best ways to use two 1GB drives in each computer are very interesting, and it will be great to get the benefit of what you learn over time -- but again, I think it is kind of overkill, one 1GB drive is plenty to do a lot with Puppy. I'd strongly encourage you to set up a few sample computers with 128MB and just one 1GB drive, no swap, and just see how well they do, what limitations they have in real use, if any!
Your intended uses are very simple, I think you can keep your computers very simple and serve those needs very well. In fact, I think your main challenges are how to keep junk from accumulating on the computers, and the more storage is available, the more this can happen. You want a very simple way to restore to a base state after anything happens. Personally, I'd be very tempted not to install to HD at all, just to run off CDs, which in the case of Puppy you can easily remaster to be whatever you want. Why would you ever want to allow users to store anything on Hard Drive, from one day to the next? They can store any personal files on floppy, on USB drives, or on the Internet... What about having no Hard Drive at all, or not having it mapped/available, or ONLY formatting it as swap, so nothing carries over from day to day?
What we really need is to hear from someone with Experience using Puppy for a large multi-workstation puplic-access type use.
I have never heard of using more than one swap partition. Best performance would be to put it on a drive least likely to get other accesses while swap is being used.
Partition Magic is the best tool I've found for manually making partitions any way you want them. Haven't used it with Linux partitions.
Ghost is the best tool for volume replicating whole hard drive filesystems. Again, have not used it for Linux.
I really think that your biggest issues are long-term admin and maintenance, and there is no substitute for actual experience. After you have been taught by reality for a year in this specific context, then you'll know just how you want to do things...