OpenSuSE 10.3 major installation problem.

[iamzim]

When I pop the DVD in and select installation from CD/DVD, it asks me whether I want a swap partition or swap file. I select swap file, and it says failure to mount (or something like that). So I selected Swap partition (9.4gb, which is my only hard drive in this computer), and continued with installation. When I get to the overview of installation settings after the desktop selection, it tells me it has no recommendation for partition settings and to set it myself. Apparently, it uses all 9.4gb as a swap partition, leaving a meager 7MB for the actual linux install, which is too small, obviously. I can't resize the swap partition either, and I don't know what to do, because I can't get any further in the installation because of this problem.

Any suggestions?

[oz]

Take a look at the Parted Magic LiveCD for working with your partitions:

Parted Magic

It can easily shrink/expand partitions, as needed.

[iamzim]

should I just create a smaller partition with that? and if so, how big should it be for me to select it as a swap partition?

[oz]

Swap partition size really depends on what you need.

Some say that it should be double the RAM count, but that's not always accurate. I usually setup a small 512 MB swap partition, and I have 1 GB of RAM. My swap partition never gets touched by Linux, so I really don't need one at all, but I go ahead and make the 512 MB partition just in case it should ever be needed.

[iamzim]

Why does it insist it creates one, then? And I'd think it wouldn't use the entire hard drive as a swap partition, it seems it would be smarter than that.

[gogalthorp]

Normally it sets it to twice the installed ram you must have done something to change that.

Suse normally creates 3 partitions. and makes the following mount points

1) /swap
2) / (root)
3)/home

Swap is set to twice RAM
Root is set to a min of 4-5gig with a max I think of 20 based on some formula using the max available disk space
Home is normally assigned the rest.

The need for swap will depend on the total ram and what programs you run.
example Initial I had 1 gig I'm running XP in VMware. It ran put there was much swapping and jerky performance. I added another gig and now XP runs as if it was on the machine by itself. So I never hit the swap file anymore.

So if you have too little memory for the jobs you will run the more you need swap. You run out of swap and thats it the machine stops.

[Jonathan183]

Why does it insist it creates one, then? And I'd think it wouldn't use the entire hard drive as a swap partition, it seems it would be smarter than that.

I think the question Linux asks during the installation is where is the swap partition ... when I installed I picked the old swap partition for the previous version of Linux. It sounds like you ended up indicating the whole disc could be used as a swap partition. I think your stuck with a re-install but you should be able to get Linux to suggest the partitioning, just make sure the suggested partition does not kill off other OS or data partitions you may have.

[coolio10]

I have the same problem but in a virtual pc. It keeps asking for swap.
Swap file fails and swap partition just keeps closing and opening. Is 128mb to small for mem. It has 15GB assigned.

[gogalthorp]

That is 15 gigs for memory or virtual disk?? There is a difference. The amount of the swap should be twice the amount of memory of the virtual machine.

Note the exact amount of swap needed is dependent on the total memory used by the OS and the apps. In most desktop situations 1x memory is more then enough but in server apps you may need lots more. If you need more then 2x memory you should add more real memory.