Did I install right?

Just want to confirm that I’ve installed correctly. I installed openSUSE 13.2 KDE 64 bit from a live USB flash drive to my laptop (Dell XPS M1330), mainly on account of I didn’t want to deal with the old Windows Vista (32 bit) that came with it and can’t find the original disc anyway. The laptop is running an Intel T9300 Core2Duo (2.5GHz/6M/800MHz), 4GB DDR2-800 and has nVidia GeForce 8600M GS graphics. HDD is a Seagate Momentus 500GB 7200RPM. I tried to install a few different OSes from DVD but it seems the optical drive has failed and will no longer read discs. Figured in that case I’ll just install the openSUSE 13.2 that I already have on a bootable flash drive.

For the install I followed this video tutorial to make sure I did it right:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8wt69oTXrA

The install boots and I believe it’s all updated completely, even have the nVidia driver installed. But I noticed in the System Monitor (KSysGuard) it show no swap. There should be a whole 8GB partition set for swap, set it up exactly as shown in the above video. Was the an incorrect way to do it? Some way to fix besides for another fresh install?
Not sure if 8GB is too much for swap either, can’t say much RAM has actually been in use yet either.

Thanks

Show us /etc/fstab
And as root show fdisk -l

Please use code blocks (# in toolbar on forum editor) to keep the forum software from reformatting the text you paste

The video looks basically ok but I would not have chosen those sizes. Also it uses the older MBR boot rather then EFI boot used on newer hardware

The partition sizes and numbers are really variable depending on how you want to use the machine and what you plan to run on it. As a general rule for most people the defaults offered by the Installer are perfect. No need to fuse with settings in the installer unless you have a special need.

Note if a note book as indicated by GeForce 8600M chip (M for mobile) It may be a Optimus based hardware set up in which case you do not want the normal NVIDIA driver you want the bumblebees set up.

https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_Bumblebee

Depends on if you can set to use only the NVIDIA chip in the BIOS and if the Intel chip has a built in GPU

Please show the contents of the file “/etc/fstab”

I ran openSUSE 13.2 on a similar device (4GB RAM) and SWAP was never used. But if you do heavy work (video editing, …) that might be different. If you want “suspend to disk” you need a SWAP that can hold at least the size of your RAM (>4GB).

Best regards

susejunky

/dev/sda7            swap                 swap       defaults              0 0UUID=662bae6f-9c99-4ec2-abaa-00bbfca4c26c /                    ext4       acl,user_xattr        1 1
UUID=3dfb2cca-fe69-441b-a833-56e91b9b0c55 /boot                ext4       acl,user_xattr        1 2

linux:/home/juuso # fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 465.8 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x000536d2


Device     Boot     Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1            2048   1187839   1185792   579M 83 Linux
/dev/sda2  *      1187840 976773119 975585280 465.2G  f W95 Ext'd (LBA
/dev/sda5         1189888 479717375 478527488 228.2G 83 Linux
/dev/sda6       479719424 959963135 480243712   229G 83 Linux
/dev/sda7       959965184 976752639  16787456     8G 82 Linux swap / S

I really hate this track pad thing so much, need to dig out a spare usb mouse!

I’m pretty sure that the standard nvidia driver should be fine, it’s an older laptop from like 2008. Not certain, but think it’s got a legacy BIOS. I do know it’s revision A15 and Dell support site has that one as the final in downloads. The motherboard itself has an Intel chip on 1 side for southbridge and on the other side is an Intel northbridge next CPU (478/479 Penryn socket) then next to that is an nvidia G86M chip and I believe a couple of SDRAM chips soldered to the board beneath the systemRAM sockets that are used as VRAM for the nvidia graphics… should be 128MB if I remember right.

Does your “/etc/fstab” really look like this? Probably the missing linefeed got lost when you copied the text to the forum. If not, the file should look like this:

/dev/sda7            swap                 swap       defaults               0 0
UUID=662bae6f-9c99-4ec2-abaa-00bbfca4c26c /                     ext4       acl,user_xattr        1 1
UUID=3dfb2cca-fe69-441b-a833-56e91b9b0c55 /boot                ext4       acl,user_xattr        1 2

Please show the result of

blkid

so that we can check the UUIDs.

Best regards

susejunky

linux:/home/juuso # blkid/dev/sda1: UUID="3dfb2cca-fe69-441b-a833-56e91b9b0c55" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="000536d2-01" 
/dev/sda5: UUID="662bae6f-9c99-4ec2-abaa-00bbfca4c26c" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="000536d2-05" 
/dev/sda6: PARTUUID="000536d2-06" 
/dev/sda7: PARTUUID="000536d2-07"

on the screen it looks like how yours shows… maybe mine copied wrong because this stupid track pad is too sensitive and often double clicks when I so slightly touch it.

Thanks for posting the blkid-results.

So in your “/etc/fstab” sda7 is setup correctly to be used as SWAP. But your result of “blkid” looks strange to me.

On my system the SWAP partition is shown (with “blkid”) like this

/dev/sda5: LABEL="SWAP_1" UUID="330332d8-9646-4d86-bce3-0198ba1478cc" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="aedfb753-05"

Probably it helps, if you use the YaST2 partition tool to re-format your partition sda7 to SWAP.

Best regards

susejunky

To manipulate, or list, swap, you want the swapon command.

‘swapon -s’ (no quotes) to list what you currently have. If you want to change something, you’ll probably want to have a look at ‘man swapon’.