Swap

[marzfel]

There is simply no hibernate option in my power drop down menu, I do not have a swap partition and I think that is the reason, I dont have a SWAP partition because for some reason my hard disk wouldn't accept having more than 4 partitions .. I have got one already for the stupid windows (which I need to keep) and 1 for its recovery and its loader. So I have no space for a swap partition, and I would really love it if ubuntu can hibernate. Any suggestions on how to create a SWAP partition without losing data?

[lmarmisa]

There is simply no hibernate option in my power drop down menu, I do not have a swap partition and I think that is the reason, I dont have a SWAP partition because for some reason my hard disk wouldn't accept having more than 4 partitions .. I have got one already for the stupid windows (which I need to keep) and 1 for its recovery and its loader. So I have no space for a swap partition, and I would really love it if ubuntu can hibernate. Any suggestions on how to create a SWAP partition without losing data?

Your hard disk wouldn't accept having more than 4 primary partitions. But you if you define an extended partition, you will be able to define several logical partitions inside. An extended partition counts as one primary partition. So, you can define 3 primary partitions, 1 extended partitions and several logical partitions if you wish.

Please, post the output of this command in order to check if you could reconfigure your hard drive for supporting more than 4 partitions:



sudo fdisk -l


Do you have an external hard drive?.

[marzfel]

That is great to know..if it would work please let me know how to do that.. here is the output:


Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x43ef5841

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 196 1572864 12 Compaq diagnostics
/dev/sda2 * 196 11230 88629248 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 11230 37608 211878913 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda4 37608 38914 10486784 12 Compaq diagnostics
/dev/sda5 11230 37608 211878912 83 Linux

[oldfred]

You already have the one extended partition sda3 and it has one sda5 partition inside it. You can either shrink your sda5 to make room for swap, or shrink windows and expand the extended partition left into the unallocated you create. Then you can inside the extended create swap partition sda6. They will not be in order but do not have to be.

GParted partitioning software - Full tutorial
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/gparted.html

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq

[lmarmisa]

That is great to know..if it would work please let me know how to do that.. here is the output:


Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x43ef5841

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 196 1572864 12 Compaq diagnostics
/dev/sda2 * 196 11230 88629248 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 11230 37608 211878913 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda4 37608 38914 10486784 12 Compaq diagnostics
/dev/sda5 11230 37608 211878912 83 Linux

You have already defined an extended partition. This is /dev/sda3. So, no problem for defining logical partitions. But you will need some free space for it.

You will need to shrink the partitions /dev/sda5 or /dev/sda4 in order to release some space for the swap partition. If you shrink the Ubuntu root partition /dev/sda5 the procedure for creating the swap partition will be a little bit easier.

How much RAM do you have?.

[marzfel]

I have 2 GB of RAM,I will try doing this.. a 4GB SWAP would be fine right?

[marzfel]

right now from ubuntu the only options available for sd3 and sd5 is unmount and information..I am sorry I am a beginner but I am not sure how how am I supposed to shrink the volume/excise a part of this partition and then format it for swap..so I need to know how to shrink the ubuntu volume without affecting the running system and then creating a SWAP from the that space..can anybody help?

[oldfred]

You cannot from the running system. You have to use a liveCD so things are not mounted. If you had the swap the liveCD uses it and then you still have to unmount it with swap off.

Basics of partitions:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowtoPartition

GParted partitioning software - Full tutorial
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/gparted.html
Screenshots of using gparted
http://www.howtoforge.com/partitioning_with_gparted
Partitioning basics with some info on /data, older but still good bodhi.zazen
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=282018&highlight=separate+%2Fdata+partition


I have swap partition but these are other choices.
HOWTO: Use swapfile instead of partition and hibernate
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1042946
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq#What%20is%20swappiness%20and%20how%20do%20 I%20change%20it?
I prefer sleep and shutdown to hibernate.
'Dynamic Swap Space Manager' from the Ubuntu Software Center

[marzfel]

Thanks a lot..


I have done it...


Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 196 1572864 12 Compaq diagnostics
/dev/sda2 * 196 11230 88628224 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 11230 37608 211878913 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda4 37608 38914 10486784 12 Compaq diagnostics
/dev/sda5 11230 36825 205586432 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 36825 37608 6291456 82 Linux swap / Solaris


does that look better??



Now there is still no hibernation option..I thought this was because there was no swap, so what is it now?

[zealibib slaughter]

You need to activate swap and hibernation, here is how (from the swapfaq at ubuntu.com)



Activating the swap partition
(If your swap is on your primary hard drive, you don't need to do anything here.) Now you need to find what partition your swap is on and what its UUID is. UUID?! you say? Well that's the Universally Unique IDentifier for the partition so you can reference it even if it's on a different mount point from boot-to-boot due to adding disks, etc.
Pull up a terminal and run gksu gparted & and enter your root password. The & lets this process run while still giving you access to the command line.
Right-click on your swap partition and choose *Information*. You should see the **Path** and **UUID** listed there. Keep this open for further reference.

Run gksu gedit /etc/fstab & and look for the line that has *swap* in it. It should be the third column, separated by spaces or tabs. You can either use the path or the UUID to tell Linux where to find your swap partition. I recommend UUID because it'll stay constant even if you move the partition around or the disk somehow becomes sdb instead of sda or something like that. Make the appropriate edits and save the file. Your line should look something like this if you used UUID (with your UUID instead, of course):

UUID=41e86209-3802-424b-9a9d-d7683142dab7 none swap sw 0 0
or this if you used path: /dev/sda2 none swap sw 0 0

Save and reboot to make sure the new swap gets activated properly at startup

Making the swap partition work for hibernate (optional)
You only need to do this if you want to use your new, bigger swap partition to hibernate your computer.
Pull up a Terminal again and run cat /proc/swaps and hopefully you see the path to your swap partition listed there. If not chances are something went wrong in the steps above. Here's my output:

Filename Type Size Used Priority/dev/sda2 partition 2676732 73380 -1
gksu gedit /etc/default/grub & to pull up the boot loader configuration
Look for the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="" and make sure it looks like this (using your UUID of course) GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="resume=UUID=41e86209-3802-424b-9a9d-d7683142dab7" and save the file
sudo update-grub and wait for it to finish
gksu gedit /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume & and make sure its contents are resume=UUID=41e86209-3802-424b-9a9d-d7683142dab7 (with your UUID of course in place of mine). Save the file!
sudo update-initramfs -u
Reboot!
Now you should be able to hibernate and resume!

[marzfel]

it worked, thanks a million..

[zealibib slaughter]

NP just mark the thread as solved.