It looks like the most of the differences between the advice given in this thread and what was already in the FAQ are cosmetic, such as:

- Ctrl-D instead of typing "exit"
- Deleting all the database files by hand before asking the player to rebuild them.

However, the one difference I see that might not be cosmetic is:

- swapon /swapfile

That means that you turn on swap before rebuilding the database. But here's my thinking as to why it's not in the FAQ:

The entry in the FAQ is intended to be a fix for when things go wrong, meant to be run once and then Emplode+Player would take care of things thereafter. But Emplode+Player don't turn on swap before rebuilding the database, so if you need to turn on swap to accomplish that, then something else is wrong. In other words, if the situation is dire enough to need swap to rebuild the database, you might get one good database rebuild from the shell prompt, but then the next time Emplode triggers a database rebuild, it will fail because swap isn't on.

Am I on the right track here?