From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Dec 4 16:18:22 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher AECDH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id CC260A02 for ; Thu, 4 Dec 2014 16:18:22 +0000 (UTC) Received: from be-well.ilk.org (be-well.ilk.org [23.30.133.173]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A5962CE5 for ; Thu, 4 Dec 2014 16:18:22 +0000 (UTC) Received: by be-well.ilk.org (Postfix, from userid 1147) id 2E72633C1E; Thu, 4 Dec 2014 11:18:21 -0500 (EST) From: Lowell Gilbert To: Andre Goree Subject: Re: Issue with swap file References: <44fvcwgzaw.fsf@lowell-desk.lan> <2a3b7da1d03fd215ba1792e6617cfdb7@drenet.net> Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 11:18:21 -0500 In-Reply-To: <2a3b7da1d03fd215ba1792e6617cfdb7@drenet.net> (Andre Goree's message of "Wed, 03 Dec 2014 18:24:19 -0500") Message-ID: <44wq675qya.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.4 (berkeley-unix) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Cc: FreeBSD Questions X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.18-1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 16:18:22 -0000 Andre Goree writes: > On 12/03/2014 5:10 pm, Lowell Gilbert wrote: >> Andre Goree writes: >> >>> Several months ago, I followed the procedure here[1] for creating a >>> swap file. This worked great for a long time, up until my last reboot >>> which coincided with an update to 10.1. >>> >>> agoree@fbsd10-atl ~ % grep swap /etc/fstab >>> md99 none swap sw,file=/usr/swap 0 0 >>> agoree@fbsd10-atl ~ % sudo swapon -a >>> swapon: mdconfig (attach) error: md99 on file=/usr/swap >>> >>> I've also tried zero-writing the file again, to no avail. Any ideas? >>> >>> [1] https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/adding-swap-space.html >> >> Strange, I haven't run into any problems. And annoying that the error >> message is so unhelpful. When that error message gets printed, swapon >> has tried to run mdconfig and gotten an error back, but has no idea >> what >> the problem was. At that point, it has already checked that the md >> device is available, which eliminates my best guess at a diagnosis. >> >> The way you can get more information is by running the mdconfig command >> by hand, just as swapon would have, and see what *it* reports to you. >> mdconfig -a -t vnode -n -f /usr/swap >> >> Very likely, it will tell you exactly what to fix. > > I tried creating a new one (hence the '/usr/swap0' vs. '/usr/swap' in > the output below) and still got the same error. Here's the > [disheartening] output from the command you gave: > > agoree@fbsd10-atl ~ % sudo swapon -a > swapon: mdconfig (attach) error: md99 on file=/usr/swap0 > agoree@fbsd10-atl ~ % sudo mdconfig -a -t vnode -n -f /usr/swap0 > 0 Okay, that means mdconfig can attach the file to an md device. That eliminates my next guess, which was that md support wasn't working for some reason (such as not being in your kernel configuration). The only difference I can see is the unit number, which I forgot to include in the command. Maybe if you try mdconfig -a -t vnode -n -f /usr/swap -u 99 that will fail with an informative error message. If that doesn't help, I'm baffled.