Re: Newbie: help! Partial install...

[Shaun ONeil <shaun dog-berry com>]

On Thu, 2003-05-01 at 20:53, Paul D. Miller wrote:
> My system crashed about 6hrs into a make install (not a garnome 
> problem). How can I resume the install where it left off without having 
> to do the whole thing over again?
> 

One of make's better features, is that it doesn't do what doesn't need
doing - start make exactly as you did the first time, and it'll fly past
what it's already done.

<snip compiler errors as I have no clue there - if it doesn't stop the
build, I shrug it off>

> BTW - about the system crash: it goes into non-stop disk access (this is 
> the 2nd or 3rd time
> it's happened & I don't think it has anything to do with garnome). I did 
> a top and kswapd was doing a DW but with only 9% of CPU - maybe I ran 
> outta RAM & it was doing excessive
> swapping. The system slows to a crawl & I can't even do a clean 
> shutdown. There seems
> to be some swap problem: I've only had the machine for a week & only 
> been using Linux for a week (though I had 8 years of UNIX about 6 years 
> ago). Some hardware wasn't connected & the guy who sold it to me has 
> been having me rearrange cables & devices, etc over the phone. Now, 
> during a boot I get a: Activating swap partition: swapon: /dev/hde3 no 
> such ... FAILED ... but it boots fine & I can do eveything. Later on in 
> dmesg, I think, or
> some log file, it appears that the swap partition is OK.

Not having an active swap partition can cause problems when doing
anything intensive - garnome takes ~12 hours to build on my box, which
fits my definition of intensive :o)

If the thrashing persists, a few tips (or thoughts for further google'n)

swapon can't find the partition, but the partition is okay .. is swapon
looking at the correct partition ?

Run " fdisk -l | grep swap " (as root, fdisk requires real access to
drives, -l is list so it's not dangerous tho), and make sure the swap
partition, and what /etc/fstab thinks is the swap partition, match.

ie:

brian:~# fdisk -l | grep swap
/dev/hda5           256       322    538146   82  Linux swap
brian:~# grep swap /etc/fstab
/dev/hda5       none                    swap   
sw                              0       0

If not, correct /etc/fstab and reboot  (or swapon /dev/hda5, but I
prefer to reboot to be sure it'll work when it's meant to).

Another step that's helped me in the past, is simply to reinitialise the
swap partition (swap simply extends ram, so it doesn't survive a reboot
- so as long as it's not in use at the time, you don't loose anything)

For this route, run " mkswap /dev/whatever ", then swapon or reboot.
(PLEASE make sure the swap isn't actually being used - I hate to guess
what happens if you alter the swap partition while in use).

> 
> Anyways, I'll work that out, I just don't want to have to reinstall ALL 
> of garnome if there's
> any way not to.
> 
> Thanks
> Paul Miller
> (location one verizon net)

Hope this helps, and stick with it .. my first install or two were also
bumpy rides, as I slowly discovered more and more libraries I needed, or
headers I needed .. or tools that were the wrong version. Once the dust
settles, it's a great system.

Shaun