(solved) No swap? :-/

[beansandjeans]

So I just got LMDE installed, only to discover that no swap shows up when I go into the system monitor. Not good. Especially since this is an older computer with not a lot of RAM.

I'm not sure what exactly went wrong with the install. I set up the swap partition in Gparted, and then when I went to install I marked the /, /home, and /boot partitions, but somehow assumed that it would just automatically detect and use the swap space. Maybe I was wrong?...

So can I do something now to get it to start using the swap, or do I have to reinstall everything again. I don't have any personal data on the /home partition, and haven't really done much yet to customize this install, so it wouldn't be too big a deal to reinstall, but better not to have to go through that if I don't need to...

Also, I should note that I made two separate swap partitions on my two separate physical hard drives in this computer. One disk has a Windows install on a big partition with a small swap partition at the beginning of the disk, and the other has another swap partition at the beginning of the disk and then the /boot, /, and /home. I did this per the recommendation in Fred's thread here: viewtopic.php?f=90&t=11872

"4) If you have more than one hard drive, split your swap partition up between all your drives, creating a small swap partition on each drive. Linux will recognize and combine them all and your swap will be much much faster when you need it. It is almost like a raid 0 set-up. Swap will strip across drives."

Could this be what's causing the problem? I had the impression that the system would just automatically detect the swap space on both drives and treat it like one big swap, but maybe I was wrong...

Anyway, if anyone has a better idea about what went wrong and how to fix it then that would be appreciated

Thanks everyone!

[wayne128]

You could repair the swap's UUID in fstab.

Use blkid to get the proper UUID of swap partition, then edit into the /etc/fstab of LMDE partition

[beansandjeans]

Thanks Wayne, I went googling around to figure out how to do the "UUID in fstab" (I'm still largely a newbie), and came across the terminal command: sudo swapon /dev/whatever and then that got it working right away So I didn't end up having to mess with any UUID or fstab - maybe next time...

So far I'm pleased with the Debian version of Mint. I discovered that it doesn't have the copy-close-paste bug that the Ubuntu version has, so thumbs-up so far!

[hinto]

You could repair the swap's UUID in fstab.

Use blkid to get the proper UUID of swap partition, then edit into the /etc/fstab of LMDE partition

I "cheat" and use gparted. It will tell you the UUID, too.
-Hinto

[beansandjeans]

Actually, it wasn't totally solved yet. swapon got it turned on, but then it didn't stay on for the next time I started the computer. Had to do sudo gedit /etc/fstab and edit the UUIDs, like Wayne said. I was able to get the UUIDs from Gparted, like Hinto said, then just had to edit the ones in the fstab file to match. You can actually turn swap on from gparted too, but it still doesn't stay on for the next restart.

I found a more detailed thread here in the Ubuntu forum: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=879192

Thanks again guys!

[wayne128]

Glad you overcome this issue

Just so you can handle this similar issue next time. Remember below:
When you change partition, repartition, format a partition ( oop, you do not mean to do it but some installer did it without telling you,,, or just operator error of selecting..), when that happen, the UUID will change.
Then swap ( with current UUID) cannot be accessed due to a different "future" UUID
The cycle repeats.. but no trouble, you learned once and use many times later