Unable to activate swap

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

hi
I'm using openwrt 19.07.1 on TP-Link TL-WR741N/ND v1 (tiny) , openwrt image and kernel are custom built to enable hardware mod for usb 1.1.
I added a usb thumb drive (very old 128Mb in size) as extroot and swap, everything works perfectly except swap.
blkid :

root@OpenWrt:~# blkid
/dev/mtdblock2: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/sda1: UUID="73426687-b707-4d63-9fb7-7f6db772e644" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="2aa2f910-01"
/dev/sda2: UUID="130e5ebd-8be3-493c-8a26-6a06f79727c8" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="2aa2f910-02"
root@OpenWrt:~#

df:

root@OpenWrt:~# df
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root                 3072      3072         0 100% /rom
tmpfs                    13904      1056     12848   8% /tmp
/dev/sda1                84099      3190     74531   4% /overlay
overlayfs:/overlay       84099      3190     74531   4% /
tmpfs                      512         0       512   0% /dev
root@OpenWrt:~#

fstab:

root@OpenWrt:~# cat /etc/config/fstab 
config 'global'
	option	anon_swap	'0'
	option	anon_mount	'0'
	option	auto_swap	'1'
	option	auto_mount	'1'
	option	delay_root	'5'
	option	check_fs	'0'

config 'mount'
	option	target	'/overlay'
	option	uuid	'73426687-b707-4d63-9fb7-7f6db772e644'
	option	enabled	'1'

config 'swap'
	option	uuid	'130e5ebd-8be3-493c-8a26-6a06f79727c8'
	option	enabled	'1'

root@OpenWrt:~#

swapon:

root@OpenWrt:~# swapon -a
block: failed to swapon /dev/sda2
root@OpenWrt:~#

swapfile :

root@OpenWrt:~# mkswap /swapfile
mkswap: /swapfile: insecure permissions 0644, 0600 suggested.
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 32 MiB (33550336 bytes)
no label, UUID=de92abfa-dedf-4225-83e0-477329e20309
root@OpenWrt:~# swapon /swapfile
block: failed to swapon /swapfile (-1)
root@OpenWrt:~#

I tried mkswap /dev/sda2 before swap on , but same results.
any help is apreciated

2

Tiny builds do not include swapfile support to shrink the kernel size.

3

thanks , any chance there's a way to enable it through menuconfig?

4

Yep, it should be in Global build settings -> Kernel build options -> [*] Support for paging of anonymous memory (swap)

5

Since you're doing hardware mods consider upgrading to a 64 MB RAM chip. This is simply change out the chip, no other hardware or software needs to be changed.

6

@jow thanks , I think I enabled that option through "make kernel_menuconfig" , I'll try to enable it through "make menuconfig"

@mk24 , I already tried to solder a 64MB chip instead of 32MB but that didn't work out :smiley:

7

It propbably got overridden by the menuconfig setting. Iirc kernel_menuconfig choices only work for configs which are not covered by the normal menuconfig