SOLVED: Lenny hangs on "Activating Swap"

[Mark Marcacci <mamarcac@gmail.com>]

Thanks everyone for the input and advice.  It sounds like my "Activating Swap" issue is a bit different than some of the ones others have encountered, so I've put some info below that led to a solution for me that maybe someone else can use:

1) The machine is a Dell Inspiron 8600 with a fresh install of Lenny from the official jigdo DVD image after having DBAN'd the hard drive (120 gb Western Digital hdd) - so no file remnants possible from old installations.
2) After the installation, added the b43legacy firmware for the wifi card via b43-fwcutter, no problem.  Also installed libfuse2 and ntfs-3g.  That's it.
3) I have 3 external drives with different data I needed to copy, described below (I'm calling them Drives A, B, C for reference) <<here is where the troubleshooting began>>:
    -Drive A is a FAT formatted 1 GB usb flash memory drive - Micro Center brand.  I had erased this drive and reformatted to FAT myself a while back.
    -Drive B is an NTFS formatted 120 GB external hard drive.  I had erased this drive and reformatted to NTFS myself a while back.
    -Drive C is a new Lexar 1 GB usb memory drive that I have NOT erased and formatted myself - it's a FAT partition but has a folder on it called "Dmailer" that appears to hold some firmware or software info (I believe this is the cause of the issue, read on).
4) Connected and mounted Drives A and B with no problem, copied files, and unmounted each one (and physically disconnected usb cables), no issues.  Did a reboot since I had installed the b43legacy firmware.  No problem so far (not even a pause at "Activating Swap").
5) Connected and mounted Drive C and copied files.  Unmounted and removed, no problem.  It was the only action I had done during that login session, then I rebooted and it hung at "Activating Swap".  When I say hung I mean for 5 minutes it just sat there doing nothing.  Had to force a power cycle down of the computer.
6) Connected Drive C via usb before booting; this time no "Activating Swap" issue.  However if I removed Drive C, the boot would hang at "Activating Swap".

So, the bottom line is I'm not using Drive C with my Debian system anymore.  I'm not experienced enough at Linux to know if it corrupted the swap partition but it doesn't seem like that since it boots fine when the drive is attached.  I've tried reattaching the drive and unmounting again, but still the same boot hangup issue at "Activating Swap".  So all I can figure is that the firmware/software/crapware on Drive C caused the problem since Drives A and B I had manually erased and formatted myself, removing any extra crud that was on them.  It's as if Drive C left a ghost somewhere in swap that Debian was trying to find during boot.

Mark

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 4:57 AM, David Goodenough <david.goodenough@btconnect.com> wrote:

On Thursday 02 July 2009, Mark Marcacci wrote:
> The subject line says it all.  Just did a clean install of Lenny 5.0.2,had
> had several successful reboots and shutdowns and then tonight from a cold
> start it hung at "Activating Swap".  Before this happened, I had connected
> an NTFS drive (using NTFS-3g package) via USB and copied over 60 GB of data
> to my home partition on /dev/hda.  Unmounted the drive, shut down the
> computer with no errors.  10 minutes later went to start cold and it hung.
>
> Any ideas?  Does Lenny still want that
>
> Thanks,
> Mark

I sometimes get the same problem, on a machine which is intermittently
upgraded to unstable.  Its an old Acer laptop, and I had always put it down
to a hardware problem, but perhaps there is another problem and it is
the same one as you have been hitting.

I usually find that rebooting cures the problem, but very occasionally I
have to do it twice.

David

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