lowmem install

[wtb@partyline.org]

 Two general areas of puzzlement related to lowmem debian installation:  
 After the keyboard config during the installation vi was called
 to amend fstab to add /dev/hda3 none swap sw 0 0 .   All went well and    
 fstab looked properly modified but then I could not get out of vi and
 back to the shell prompt to go on with mkswap and swapon.  :q and :wq
 could not be used????  esc did not seem to change modes of vi???   
 What is the proper sequence of vi commands to save the latest changes
 and return to the shell prompt??
    Having failed at fixing the swap partition problem I went ahead
 and installed without a swap partition.  Went all the way through the
 making of a boot disk and arrived at "no mail" and a # prompt.  Various
 attempts at using vi to fix fstab and to call mkawap and swapon
 resulted in: bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory.
    # cat bash resulted in:
 :cat:error inloading shared libraries
 libc.so.6:failed to map segment from shared object: Cannot
 allocate  memory
    # /sbin/halt resulted in bash:fork:cannot allocate memory and then
 automatically called /sbin shutdown:error in loading shared
 libraries libc.so.6:cannot map zero-fill pages:cannot allocate
 memory. 
    Has anyone been able to install the lowmem version of debian
 linux on a 386 with 4meg ram??  If so, what procedure was used.
 Is there no hope of adding a swap partition after installation??
    How can I get the man pages before I have linux installed??
    Guidance will be appreciated.     wtb@partyline.org