Hardy wait so much on "Activating swapfile swap..." on Wubi installation

[Sephiroth]

- On DELL Inspiron 6400 1.5 RAM Ati X1300 Videocard
- New installation with Wubi Ubuntu Hardy H. 8.04 RC (10 GB)

Ubuntu installs ok, But when its restart Ubuntu stops when try to Activate the swapfile.

[TenLeftFingers (tenleftfingers)]

Hi Sephiroth,

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug. Could you give a more detailed description of the bug? For example; What is displayed on screen at this time? Also, when you say Ubuntu stops, what exactly do you mean?

Kind regards,
Jarlath

[Mads Peter Rommedahl (lhademmor)]

I've got the same problem - At the Ubuntu-boot, after the graphical bar has finished loading, the black screen enters (the one with 'Setting system clock', etc.)
All goes fine until 'Activating swapfile swap' - the system hangs, and doesn't get any further.

I was able to escape the problem by pressing ctrl + alt + del, but this seems like an ugly bug to me.

[Mads Peter Rommedahl (lhademmor)]

Confirming

[Sephiroth (sephiroth-angelous)]

Hello Jarlath

When Ubuntu try to boot, Ubuntu do some activities like load kernel, hardware, etc.
When Ubuntu is on "Activate the swapfile swap..." stops the load and it doesn''t continue,

I have read some help and Wube create a file called "swap.disk", I see in Windows and it is correct, so maybe the problem is because the harddrive isn't defragmented but I'm no sure about it.

[TenLeftFingers (tenleftfingers)]

Did you both use Wubi to install?

[Mads Peter Rommedahl (lhademmor)]

Yep

[TenLeftFingers (tenleftfingers)]

Okay, I'll contact Wubi devs via the forum and see if they can add anything to this.

[Agostino Russo (ago)]

Can you pls check whether swap.disk is fragmented?

[TenLeftFingers (tenleftfingers)]

This could be related to this bug:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/219946

[Saivann Carignan (oxmosys)]

I just defragmented my drive and this bug is still here. Ubuntu waits 2 minutes on "Activate the swapfile swap..." but the hard drive is completely inactive during that period. I've been also able to reproduce this bug from within a VirtualBox guest Windows XP installation.

[Saivann Carignan (oxmosys)]

Changing the amount of available RAM from 256Mb to 1024Mb does not seem to have any effects.

[Marius (marius-pacificwest)]

hi i had the same problem,
for my case i simply uncompressed the ntfs drive and it installed without problems.

there is another way to solve this whilst keeping the drive compressed by selecting the ubuntu folder and subfolders uncompressed

regards

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

The Ubuntu Kernel Team is planning to move to the 2.6.27 kernel for the upcoming Intrepid Ibex 8.10 release. As a result, the kernel team would appreciate it if you could please test this newer 2.6.27 Ubuntu kernel. There are one of two ways you should be able to test:

1) If you are comfortable installing packages on your own, the linux-image-2.6.27-* package is currently available for you to install and test.

--or--

2) The upcoming Alpha5 for Intrepid Ibex 8.10 will contain this newer 2.6.27 Ubuntu kernel. Alpha5 is set to be released Thursday Sept 4. Please watch http://www.ubuntu.com/testing for Alpha5 to be announced. You should then be able to test via a LiveCD.

Please let us know immediately if this newer 2.6.27 kernel resolves the bug reported here or if the issue remains. More importantly, please open a new bug report for each new bug/regression introduced by the 2.6.27 kernel and tag the bug report with 'linux-2.6.27'. Also, please specifically note if the issue does or does not appear in the 2.6.26 kernel. Thanks again, we really appreicate your help and feedback.

[Malcolm Cringe (cammcgill)]

I upgrated to 8.10 beta, and I still have this problem. Freezes on "Activating swapfile swap". I originally did a Wubi installation.

[Marius (marius-pacificwest)]

- Malcolm Cringe, did you try installing as i did (on a uncompressed windows partition) ?

from what i can tell, if wubi creates the "swap.disk" on a compressed partition, windows will also compress that file,
and THAT causes (at least to me) all the problems during the main ubuntu install

so i disabled the windows drive compression from C: drive properties
and i ran again wubi and it all worked fine.

[Malcolm Cringe (cammcgill)]

Thanks for responding. To answer your question, no. I created a partition
for Ubuntu and installed on that.
Since reporting this error, I let it sit on the "Activating swapfile swap"
message overnight. When I woke up, it had gone through it, and I don't get
that message any more. Maybe I just wasn't waiting long enough before.
Cameron

On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 6:22 AM, Marius <email address hidden> wrote:

> - Malcolm Cringe, did you try installing as i did (on a uncompressed
> windows partition) ?
>
> from what i can tell, if wubi creates the "swap.disk" on a compressed
> partition, windows will also compress that file,
> and THAT causes (at least to me) all the problems during the main ubuntu
> install
>
> so i disabled the windows drive compression from C: drive properties
> and i ran again wubi and it all worked fine.
>
> --
> Hardy wait so much on "Activating swapfile swap..." on Wubi installation
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/219349
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in "linux" source package in Ubuntu: Triaged
>
> Bug description:
> - On DELL Inspiron 6400 1.5 RAM Ati X1300 Videocard
> - New installation with Wubi Ubuntu Hardy H. 8.04 RC (10 GB)
>
> Ubuntu installs ok, But when its restart Ubuntu stops when try to Activate
> the swapfile.
>

[ragnaroknroll (ragnaroknroll)]

I have ubuntu installed on an uncompressed drive... I still have the
same problem...
I haven't upgraded to 8.10 yet though... Am waiting for the final
release to upgrade...

On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 12:51 PM, Malcolm Cringe <email address hidden> wrote:
> Thanks for responding. To answer your question, no. I created a partition
> for Ubuntu and installed on that.
> Since reporting this error, I let it sit on the "Activating swapfile swap"
> message overnight. When I woke up, it had gone through it, and I don't get
> that message any more. Maybe I just wasn't waiting long enough before.
> Cameron
>
> On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 6:22 AM, Marius <email address hidden> wrote:
>
>> - Malcolm Cringe, did you try installing as i did (on a uncompressed
>> windows partition) ?
>>
>> from what i can tell, if wubi creates the "swap.disk" on a compressed
>> partition, windows will also compress that file,
>> and THAT causes (at least to me) all the problems during the main ubuntu
>> install
>>
>> so i disabled the windows drive compression from C: drive properties
>> and i ran again wubi and it all worked fine.
>>
>> --
>> Hardy wait so much on "Activating swapfile swap..." on Wubi installation
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/219349
>> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
>> of the bug.
>>
>> Status in "linux" source package in Ubuntu: Triaged
>>
>> Bug description:
>> - On DELL Inspiron 6400 1.5 RAM Ati X1300 Videocard
>> - New installation with Wubi Ubuntu Hardy H. 8.04 RC (10 GB)
>>
>> Ubuntu installs ok, But when its restart Ubuntu stops when try to Activate
>> the swapfile.
>>
>
> --
> Hardy wait so much on "Activating swapfile swap..." on Wubi installation
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/219349
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of a duplicate bug.
>

[hotchip (hotrdenhell)]

I have this same problem.I installed it twice.first on a 20 gig drive which worked fine but i partitioned it 4gig to try it out.and it worked fine till i ran out of space. so i i tried installing on a 40 give drive with wubi partition of 9gig and during the wubi install i had the problem with swapfile swap and it hangs for like 40 minutes and then continue and finish then reboot and continue the installation.then when its done and tries to restart, the splash bar goes 1/3 full and goes to a camand screen and list kind of memory test and sd card test then goes all the way down till it get to another swapfile swap hang. and does this for another 40 minutes then continue boots up.after that its fine till i have to start it up again. so if anyone figure a solution let me know.

suggestion i think may work. I think the one i installed on 20 gig at first was the 8.04 copy of ubuntu. and they updated that to 8.04.1 copy of ubuntu.I put ubuntu 8.04.1 on my 40 gig im starting to think thats my problem so im go work with that. :)

[thomsit (newsletter-x86)]

Same here with with original wubi 8.04 updated to final 8.10 Ibex. The startup freezes for about one minute at "activating swapfile swap" with no hard drive activity.

[Carl Moss (carl-moss-me)]

Same for me as thomsit, except I originally had to wait 20 minutes for the swapfile to activate.

I cleared some space on the disk and re-installed Intrepid via wubi from the CD. There's still a delay - now seconds rather than minutes - activating the swapfile. dmesg doesn't show any errors. The swapfile is on an NTFS disk.

[zorblek (zorblek)]

I'm experiencing the same problem as thomsit on wubi 8.04 upgraded to 8.10. I've had the same problem in both versions. It takes about 5 minutes to move on.

This may just be coincidence, but I've noticed that the majority of people reporting this bug seem to be using Dell machines. I have an XPS M1210.

[Swagman (agent007-mib)]

This problem also occurs on an AMD64 asus A4book (ati mobility 9700) laptop installed into XP home via wubi. It showed its ugly head on initial install of 8:04.

Symptoms: Orange bar goes over rapidly(ish) to about 38% whereby it hangs for about 20 secs before dropping into text screen.

Various OK's before hanging for about two minutes on Activating Swapfile.

It then continues to boot as normal and works beautifully.
I was hoping this would be cured in the 8:10 release but sadly not. The update itself was a disaster ending up requiring fresh install... But thats another story !!

Regards

Paul Hovell

[hotchip (hotrdenhell)]

Im starting to think its one of the 3 thing:

The hard format
The type of harddrive
or how big the freespace selected in wubi install.

My 20 gig wasnt compressed format and i only set it to 4 gig space and it worked fine.
But my 40 gig was compressed format and i set it to 9 gigs and i got the problem.

I was thinking that the problem was there till i installed 8.04 on my friend new computer(intel celeron dual core with 360 gig drive)and it worked fine fast and stable too at 30 gig max out of the whole 360.Im pretty sure he has a sata drive

Maybe i my 40 give hard drive is bad and i should get a new hard drive all though everything else runs smooth such as windows on that drive.so i dont know.

control alt backspace works but i would wrather be able to walk away from my pc and get a snack not have to wait for this. so if u find a fix for this bug inform me.....thanks!!!

[James Berry (jibberish)]

I have the same problem dating back to when I first installed 8.04 using Wubi. I hoped it would be fixed by upgrading to 8.10 but no such luck. Does anyone have instructions for recreating the swap.disk file? Should there be an entry for swap in blkid?

Linux james-laptop 2.6.27-7-generic #1 SMP Tue Nov 4 19:33:06 UTC 2008 x86_64 GNU/Linux

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/host/ubuntu/disks/root.disk / ext3 loop,errors=remount-ro,relatime 0 1
/host/ubuntu/disks/boot /boot none bind 0 0
/host/ubuntu/disks/swap.disk none swap loop,sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0

 dmesg | grep swap
[ 117.234823] Adding 976552k swap on /host/ubuntu/disks/swap.disk. Priority:-1 extents:1 across:976552k

sudo blkid
/dev/sda1: UUID="7B6A-7B6B" TYPE="vfat"
/dev/sda2: UUID="2E7803197802E007" LABEL="Local_Disk" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda5: UUID="74ECADB2ECAD6ED4" LABEL="DATA" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/loop0: UUID="2ada9cd2-8f43-48b5-923e-11a32b5566f9" TYPE="ext3"

[Tim (ubuntu-tjfs)]

same problem, Acer Aspire 7100 laptop

[WacoJohn (johnbooth)]

Same problem XUBUNTU though. Old Dell Latitude 20G hard drive, Wubi install to XP Pro.

$ uname -a
Linux ubuntu 2.6.27-11-generic #1 SMP Thu Jan 29 19:24:39 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux

[WacoJohn (johnbooth)]

I booted to XP pro and attempted a HDD defrag. Analysis said it was TREMENDOUSLY fragmented. I started the defrag and got the following notice:

This is from a Windows XP defrag.
Fragments File Size Files that cannot be defragmented
41 589 MB \ubuntu\install\.fuse_hidden0000000400000001
789 954 MB \ubuntu\disks\swap.disk
443 6.52 GB \ubuntu\disks\root.disk

then I went into XUBUNTU and got the following:

Volume (C:)
    Volume size = 18.63 GB
    Cluster size = 4 KB
    Used space = 12.65 GB
    Free space = 5.98 GB
    Percent free space = 32 %

Volume fragmentation
    Total fragmentation = 31 %
    File fragmentation = 63 %
    Free space fragmentation = 0 %

File fragmentation
    Total files = 26,381
    Average file size = 640 KB
    Total fragmented files = 2
    Total excess fragments = 1,263
    Average fragments per file = 1.04

Pagefile fragmentation
    Pagefile size = 768 MB
    Total fragments = 1

Folder fragmentation
    Total folders = 1,458
    Fragmented folders = 1
    Excess folder fragments = 0

Master File Table (MFT) fragmentation
    Total MFT size = 75 MB
    MFT record count = 28,007
    Percent MFT in use = 36 %
    Total MFT fragments = 3

I don't know if this is any help or not. I'm getting a ton of disk thrashing .. in both Xubuntu and XP. Going to uninstall Xubuntu and defrag and reinstall. If it improves the wait time for the Swapfile to activate I will comment again.

[WacoJohn (johnbooth)]

One more thing, while in Windows, I turned off System Restore ... too a LONG time to delete all the restore points so there must have been quite a few. I also diabled Prefetch. I have NOT yet uninstalled KUBUNTU and all my drive activity is normal. Will try to boot to Kubuntu and see how swapfile activation goes.

[WacoJohn (johnbooth)]

After doing all that, I still had to uninstall XUBUNTU, defrag Windows disk, and WUBI install Xubuntu. It purrs like a kitten now.

[Tony Adams (odinson23)]

Hi , I am not in your computing league, but I installed to a WD 400GB "new drive" (which I did not format) and I upgraded to 9.04 because I could not resolve wireless internet access issues with 8.10. It also hangs at the "activate swapfile" point. Since this is an accessory drive should I format it first? It is FAT at present and I will be needing an NTFS partition soon.

[Magnus Wissler (gmw)]

Confirm, but not with Wubi

I'm running an upgraded 8.10 => 9.04 x86_64 Linux originally installed without Wubi, and I see the "Activating swapfile swap" which hangs around for 1-2 minutes before proceeding. This didn't occur until about a month ago (i.e. not related to the upgrade itself). Is there a possibility that a kernel update caused this? I do have a bootable Windows 7 partition on the disk as well.

[Magnus Wissler (gmw)]

When I wrote Linux I meant Ubuntu... just to be clear.

[Anyeos (lagunaloire)]

All of this can be a lot of files on /tmp
Next to activate swapfile the system just delete files from /tmp
In my particular case that was the problem I just was testing the creation of a lot of directories (1 millon) in /tmp so my system just hang next to "Activating swapfile" and pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del it continues to work but when I just see in /tmp I noticed that a lot of files still have there. And that revealed the problem when I just examine the initscripts. Next to activating the swapfile comes clean filesystems so just that is where the system "hang".
The solution for me just was: Wait a lot (some minutes) to let the system finish the cleaning of /tmp.

So if you install Linux above another filesystem like NTFS or worst: a compressed one, that will "hang" for more time because a filesystem over another filesystem is near two times slower and a compressed one is more slower in some cases. So you must wait more time to finish the task of cleaning /tmp.

Bye.

[Soltész András (soltesz-andras)]

I have a very similar problem with a simple (non-Wubi) installation.

"Activating swapfile swap" hangs around for 90 seconds before proceeding. The hard-drive is spinning like crazy in that period.

Deleting from the /tmp folder didn't help.

[Luciano Barcellos (lcbarcellos)]

Same problem here. Jaunty 9.04 on Dell Vostro 1510 from livecd installation. No Wubi. I don't know whether that matters, but the machine has dual boot. The sda4 partition is ntfs.

[Alx (stungun-86)]

Upgraded from 8.10 to 9.04 on an Acer Aspire 3103WLMi laptop, and at the restart it hung up on "Activating swapfile swap..."
Also, during the upgrade, memtest86+ failed to install.

[Lukas Diduch (lukas-diduch)]

Confirm Solution #34 (Anyeos wrote on 2009-07-02):

The boot process seems to freeze AFTER "Activating swapfile swap". (It reports [OK] doesn't it).
I assume as well it's S36mountall-bootclean.sh.

Cleaning /tmp solves the freeze. (It took about 10mins to rm -rf * my 20 GB of files there)

I would NOT recommend to use CTRL-ALT-DEL since (as mentioned before) other init processes might be affected (e.g. network in my case). Either wait and let the bootprocess do it's job or ctrl-alt-del to continue boot but then clean /tmp by hand and reboot.

Recommendation: It seems this confusion is caused because there's no feedback that S36mountall-bootclean.sh is executed, so one might be tempted to think the S35mountall.sh hangs reporting Activating swapfile swap. Developers should add a line of feedback.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Sephiroth, this bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? If so, could you please test for this with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ .

If it remains an issue, could you please run the following command in the development release from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal), as it will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report:

apport-collect -p linux <replace-with-bug-number>

Also, could you please test the latest upstream kernel available following https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds ? It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Please do not test the daily folder, but the one all the way at the bottom. Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please comment on which kernel version specifically you tested. If this bug is fixed in the mainline kernel, please add the following tags:
kernel-fixed-upstream
kernel-fixed-upstream-VERSION-NUMBER

where VERSION-NUMBER is the version number of the kernel you tested. For example:
kernel-fixed-upstream-v3.11

This can be done by clicking on the yellow circle with a black pencil icon next to the word Tags located at the bottom of the bug description. As well, please remove the tag:
needs-upstream-testing

If the mainline kernel does not fix this bug, please add the following tags:
kernel-bug-exists-upstream
kernel-bug-exists-upstream-VERSION-NUMBER

As well, please remove the tag:
needs-upstream-testing

Once testing of the upstream kernel is complete, please mark this bug's Status as Confirmed. Please let us know your results. Thank you for your understanding.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for linux (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]