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View Full Version : [lubuntu] lubuntu 18.10 on old 32 bit laptop = no swap partition?



famewolf
November 22nd, 2018, 01:48 AM
I installed lubuntu 18.10 on an old 32 bit Acer Aspire 3000 (2gb ram, 128GB ide ssd sis chipset everything..video, sound etc)....it took some doing because it would stop right after the b43 firmware warning messages and do nothing...no black screen like x was starting...nada....through I found through pure luck that after logging into a shell via ctrl-alt-f2 I was able to type "startx" and the gui came right up...I did the normal install telling it I wanted the whole drive encrypted with LVM. It installed overnight and the next morning it booted up into a 640x480 resolution gui....no big deal there...I have a custom xorg.conf that gives 1280x768 using vesa and it quickly was corrected. I've noticed however that no swap partition was created and it allocated the entire length of the ssd. I installed zram-config to see if it gave any difference in "feel". I know that by default zram-config takes 25% of available memory and makes a ram disk swap however in both cases swap continued to show 0 available/used. Is this a glitch or is it expected behavior? I can't say the laptop is running terribly but I would have expected a little swap to be available. I'm reasonably certain it's not because I have an ssd installed because the older IDE ssd's mimic being an IDE hard drive.

23dornot23d
November 22nd, 2018, 02:07 AM
You might find your answer in this thread ....... https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2392004

Since Ubuntu 17.10 they are now using swap files ...........

You probably already have a swap file.

cat /etc/fstab

Someone else may be able to give more clarification ......

I have just heard its used now instead of a swap area in the partitioning - like we used to have.

ajgreeny
November 22nd, 2018, 11:24 AM
The command
free -mw will show you exactly how much swap you have, and yes, it is now a swap file by default, not a separate partition,

If you have upgraded having previously had a swap partition, or clean installed and used"Something Else" in the installation, continuing to use old partitions, you may find that a swap partition is in use but it is no longer necessary.

famewolf
November 22nd, 2018, 07:47 PM
Appreciate the kind, on point feedback!

famewolf
November 22nd, 2018, 10:22 PM
Ok I finally got back to the actual laptop and did both the "free -mw" and the "cat /etc/fstab". I'm not seeing anything to indicate a swapfile is in use.



total used free shared buffers cache available
Mem: 1946 465 519 14 105 856 1256
Swap: 0 0 0
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a device; this may
# be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices that works even if
# disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
/dev/mapper/luks-97936e6b-df0e-41ed-ac10-2ec5730f5a2a / ext4 defaults,discard 0 1
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0


*conclusion* As previously thought, no swap was allocated. I followed the instructions here: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-add-swap-on-ubuntu-14-04 to allocate a 2G swapfile and set a swappiness of 10. I'd say this was a genuine bug.