Adding swap space is pretty easy. This will add more, but slower ram; helping you when dealing with large files. In general, linux likes to have twice the amount of swap space as RAM. Since the N800 has 128M memory, I’m adding 256M. We’ll see how this perform in the long run.

Before, no swap in use:

Nokia-N800-51-3:~# free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 126828 87248 39580 0 1012
Swap: 0 0 0
Total: 126828 87248 39580

Performing commands to add swap file and use it on reboots:

Nokia-N800-51-3:~# cd /media/mmc2/
Nokia-N800-51-3:/media/mmc2# dd if=/dev/zero of=./.swap bs=1024 count=262144
262144+0 records in
262144+0 records out
Nokia-N800-51-3:/media/mmc2# mkswap /media/mmc2/.swap
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 268431361 bytes
Nokia-N800-51-3:/media/mmc2# swapon /media/mmc2/.swap
Nokia-N800-51-3:/media/mmc2# echo "/media/mmc2/.swap none swap sw 0 0" >> /etc/fstab
Nokia-N800-51-3:/media/mmc2# cat /etc/fstab
rootfs / rootfs defaults,errors=remount-ro,noatime 0 0
/dev/mmcblk0p1 /media/mmc1 vfat rw,noauto,nodev,noexec,nosuid,utf8,uid=29999 0 0
/media/mmc2/.swap none swap sw 0 0
Nokia-N800-51-3:/media/mmc2# vi /etc/init.d/rcS

-- add this line before exit 0: swapon -a

Nokia-N800-51-3:/media/mmc2# reboot

Broadcast message from root (pts/0) (Sat Mar 8 17:20:49 2008):

The system is going down for reboot NOW!

Swap file is now in use:

Nokia-N800-51-3:~# free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 126828 98020 28808 0 1044
Swap: 262136 0 262136
Total: 388964 98020 290944

Also, you can add up to 128k by going into Settings->Memory. But that is a little too easy isn’t it?

3 comments
  1. Pingback: Dave Drager
  2. Thanks for that, got me set up with swap space on my N800.

    However you could explain what the commands actually do for noobs who don’t quite understand the intricacies of Linux.

  3. Thanks for that, got me set up with swap space on my N800.

    However you could explain what the commands actually do for noobs who don’t quite understand the intricacies of Linux.

Comments are closed.

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