Bug 118185

Summary:	YAST SL10 Installer should check for existing swap partitions
Product:	[openSUSE] SUSE LINUX 10.0	Reporter:	Thomas Meindl <twm.mst>
Component:	Mobile Devices	Assignee:	Forgotten User ZhJd0F0L3x <forgotten_ZhJd0F0L3x>
Status:	VERIFIED FIXED	QA Contact:	Klaus Kämpf <kkaempf>
Severity:	Enhancement
Priority:	P5 - None
Version:	RC 1
Target Milestone:	SUSE Linux 10.1
Hardware:	i686
OS:	All
Whiteboard:
Found By:	Other	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---

Description Thomas Meindl 2005-09-21 08:59:07 UTC

As I learned recently, there is a problem with the powersave suspend to disk
feature and more than one swap partition. Because I did a fresh install, the
Yast Linux installer first wanted to format hdb but (because I wanted to keep a
backup system) I altered the install location to hda. Yast suggested an extended
partition (there was already a NTFS partition on hda) with a swap and the root
partition, but did not inform me that I could use the swap on hdb instead and
that there would be problems with the powersave program. As I checked the
suspend to disk feature with kpowersave, I got the error message about the two
swaps. So it would be nice if the YaST installer would provide some information
about this.  

To test SL10RC1 I installed it on hda in an extended partition as was suggested
by the YAST installer. So this looks like the following:

 hda1: Windows
 hda2: Extended
 hda5: Linux swap (1GB)
 hda6: Linux native (ReiserFS)

Also I have a SL9.3 on hdb (my main system):

 hdb1: Linux swap (1GB)
 hdb2: Linux native (ReiserFS  / )
 hdb3: Linux native (ReiserFS /home )

(Athlon XP2800+, 1GB main memory, hda: 80GB, hdb: 200GB)

It's just a small issue, so I hope I don't waste your time, excellent work so far!

Regards, Tom

Comment 1 Michael Gross 2005-09-21 10:56:06 UTC

I'd call this an enhancement. Reassigned.

Comment 2 Thomas Fehr 2005-09-21 12:17:54 UTC

So far we do not want to do partitioning suggestions that span more than
one disk. This leads to problems as soon as people change disks.

I would prefer to fix kpowersave that it can handle multiple swaps on
multiple disks. It could for example look at /etc/fstab or /proc/swaps
to find out which swap belongs to the currently running system.

Comment 3 Thomas Meindl 2005-09-22 06:49:46 UTC

Well that's reasonable. Shall I close this bug as INVALID or WONTFIX and open a
new one regarding powersave?

Comment 4 Thomas Fehr 2005-09-22 08:48:35 UTC

No need to create a new bug.
I already reassigned this bug to the maintainer of kpowersave.

Comment 5 Thomas Renninger 2005-10-16 14:31:07 UTC

AFAIK the kernel itself gets confused if there is more than one swap partition.
We could ugly workaround the problem by disabling all other swap partitions than the resume=/dev/xxxY partion, so that the kernel only uses that one to write data to.
Seife, you know more about this stuff, close this one if changes are too complex...

Comment 6 Forgotten User ZhJd0F0L3x 2005-10-30 09:31:03 UTC

i'll have to ask Pavel on that. Pavel, what is the current status wrt multiple swap partitions?
If it works at all, which partition will contain the swsusp signature? and which of them do i need to give as "resume=" device?

I'll do some tests on this, but due to other high priority tasks these will have to wait.

Comment 7 Pavel Machek 2005-10-30 11:30:46 UTC

IIRC, kernel should now support swsusp with two swaps active (but will only use one of them). It is very little tested code path, though.

Comment 8 Forgotten User ZhJd0F0L3x 2005-10-30 14:22:20 UTC

Ok. I'll start testing it. I assume that the suspend header will be written to the partition given by "resume=..." on initial boot?

Comment 9 Pavel Machek 2005-11-01 22:27:46 UTC

Yes, it should work like that.

Comment 10 Forgotten User ZhJd0F0L3x 2006-02-13 18:26:26 UTC

i fixed this in powersave for 10.1:
- we check if the swap partition given in "resume=" is available and only error out if it is not.
- i tested multiple swap partitions - they work fine