How to enable swapping on S805 m201d?

R0bur · November 9, 2019 at 8:59 AM

I would like to enable swapping for the LibreELEC 8.2.3.1-m201d because AmLogic S805 TV Box has only 512 Mb RAM and freezes on the YouTube browsing.

What I do:

1) Set the build options to:

Code

SWAP_SUPPORT="yes"
SWAP_ENABLED_DEFAULT="no"
SWAPFILESIZE="256"

and the Linux kernel options to:

Code

CONFIG_SWAP=y
FRONTSWAP=y
HIBERNATION=n
MTD_SWAP=n
ZCACHE=y
ZCACHE_DEBUG=n

2) Compile and create the developer release image, install the image to the SD Card and boot it.

3) Customise the swap configuration file:

Code

#cp /etc/swap.conf /storage/.config/
#sed -i 's/SWAP_ENABLED="no"/SWAP_ENABLED="yes"/' /storage/.config/swap.conf

and create the file /storage/.config/autostart.sh with contents:

Bash

#!/bin/sh
sysctl -qw vm.swappiness=40

But after all the swapping does not work:

Code

LibreELEC:~ # free
total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        353848     280324      73524          0      42460     139240
-/+ buffers/cache:      98624     255224
Swap:       262104          0     262104
LibreELEC:~ # swapon --show
NAME                     TYPE SIZE USED  PRIO
/storage/.cache/swapfile file 256M   0B 10000
LibreELEC:~ # ls -l /storage/.cache/swapfile
-rw-------    1 root     root     268435456 Nov  7 17:08 /storage/.cache/swapfile
LibreELEC:~ # cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
40
LibreELEC:~ # dmesg | grep -i swap
[    8.132168@3] systemd[1]: Starting Mounting swapfile...
[    9.996927@0] Adding 262104k swap on /storage/.cache/swapfile.  Priority:10000 extents:9 across:299000k SSFS

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What is my mistake?

edjalmo · November 11, 2019 at 3:55 PM

I enabled swap in my raspberry pi 3b using this: [How to] Enable swapfile on LibreELEC

**Iridium** · November 11, 2019 at 6:54 PM Official Post

Hmm. Just tried on my S905x (LibreELEC (wrxtasy-kszaq): 8.2.4.2-S905Test-1529136339 (S912.arm)
) and it doesn't work.

My guess is that swapping was NOT enabled in the kernel - for these devices it was not necessary (oodles of RAM).

If you *really* need swap then you are doing something beyond the concept of LE or just doing too much for your box.

R0bur · November 15, 2019 at 9:50 AM

edjalmo : Thank you. I've did the same things on the S805 Box, but unsuccessfully.

Iridium: You're right, swapping was not enabled in the kernel. Therefore I've rebuilt the kernel with the swapping support. And Linux creates the swap-file during booting process. But it doesn't use it in its work...