I have a gentoo system that I've given 256 mgs of swap to but the swap
space does "show up" when I use commands like df and mount, although
running top shows that there is 256 mgs of swap there. Support for swap
is enabled in the 2.6.10 kernel.

The only thing dmesg says about it is:
Adding 258040k swap on /dev/hda2. Priority:-1 extents:1

When I run swapon -a as root I get the response:
swapon: /dev/hda2: Device or resource busy

My /etc/fstab for the swap entry is:
/dev/hda2 none swap sw 0 0

Why does the system say the device is busy when I try to mount it, and
how can I mount get it to mount at boot?

TIA,
David

David wrote:
> I have a gentoo system that I've given 256 mgs of swap to but the swap
> space does "show up" when I use commands like df and mount, although
> running top shows that there is 256 mgs of swap there. Support for swap
> is enabled in the 2.6.10 kernel.

"Does" or "does not"?

David wrote:
> I have a gentoo system that I've given 256 mgs of swap to but the swap
> space does "show up" when I use commands like df and mount, although
> running top shows that there is 256 mgs of swap there. Support for swap
> is enabled in the 2.6.10 kernel.
>
> The only thing dmesg says about it is:
> Adding 258040k swap on /dev/hda2. Priority:-1 extents:1
>
> When I run swapon -a as root I get the response:
> swapon: /dev/hda2: Device or resource busy
>
> My /etc/fstab for the swap entry is:
> /dev/hda2 none swap sw 0 0
>
> Why does the system say the device is busy when I try to mount it, and
> how can I mount get it to mount at boot?
>
> TIA,
> David

Hi David,

I believe it is automatically 'mounted' during boot when it is in fstab
like you wrote.
What does swapon say when you've used swapoff first?

-FriendlyGhost

David enlightened us with:
> I have a gentoo system that I've given 256 mgs of swap to but the swap
> space does "show up" when I use commands like df and mount

Assuming you mean "doesn't" - it's really normal that it doesn't show
up there. Why would it? It isn't a file system, you don't mount it.
Why would it show up on the output of 'mount'?

> although running top shows that there is 256 mgs of swap there.

So no problem.

> The only thing dmesg says about it is:
> Adding 258040k swap on /dev/hda2. Priority:-1 extents:1

Yessss... so what is your problem?

> When I run swapon -a as root I get the response:
> swapon: /dev/hda2: Device or resource busy

Because it's already being used. Did you expect anything else?

> My /etc/fstab for the swap entry is:
> /dev/hda2 none swap sw 0 0

Which is apparently correct.

> Why does the system say the device is busy when I try to mount it

You're not even trying to mount it. Why do you mix things up so badly?

> and how can I mount get it to mount at boot?

Why do you keep insisting on mounting something that isn't mountable,
especially when your computer tells you everything is fine?

Sybren
--
The problem with the world is stupidity. Not saying there should be a
capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the
safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?
Frank Zappa