Hello,

In attaching an external USB HD to my Asus, I was not able to format my partition(s) in ext2 without first creating a swap partition on the drive.

Two questions:

1. Why must I create swap?
2. How large should I make it (if I am forced to create one because of some unknown kernel requirement)?
3. Will any amount of swap increase the performance of the router?

Thanks,
Seth

That's three questions.......

Hehe...so it is.  Three questions, then.

Well, you have to create swap in order to format since your router dont have enough memory to format large HD.
64 or 128 Mb should be enough. Otherwise just format the HD on another system and then replug.
Then just look if YOUR router needs extra ram or not.
If your average ram usage ( free )  is usually below your router ram size you can safely delete the swap partition after you have formated your drive and convert it to storage space. I your router actually needs more ram well, just keep it.
But anyway, what's 128 or 64 Mb on current HD size ? Nothing much. So just keep it in case you later have use of it to format other hd or other tasks.

Thanks mururoa, just the information I needed.

Seth