If it's mounted, and shows up in the output of "free," then that's not the problem. It could be bad memory. 2.6 kernels are bigger than 2.4 kernels, and may require more memory than 2.4, and thus, if there is bad memory on your system, it may be more likely to trigger the crash. You keep talking about a swap file, but most people have a swap partition. The line for a swap partition in /etc/fstab will look something like this. /dev/sda6 swap swap defaults 0 0 Keep in mind that you have to know which partition is your swap partition. Usually, setup will install it correctly, and you won't need to mess with it. As for your line length, what editor are you using? Almost all editors can do word wrapping. With editors like vi and emacs, you have to enable it, but pico, which is the default editor in Pine does word-wrap automatically, and if you insert in the middle of a line, and it goes off the screen, hitting control-j will "justify," or refill the paragraph so that it properly wraps.
