Step to create swap partition on Ubuntu Linux. It should work on any other Linux also.
- Create storage file (say 4GB) using fallocate for swap partition
$ sudo fallocate -l 4G /swap1
Alternatively dd (slower) can also be used. To create file using 1M buffer size using dd$ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swap1 bs=1M count=4096
- Make swap file only accessible by root
$ sudo chmod 0600 /swap1
- Setup linux swap area in created file
$ sudo mkswap /swap1 Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 4194300 KiB no label, UUID=9551f5f9-5565-4753-81fd-9cc43a546daf
- To enabled swap file immediately
$ sudo swapon /swap1
- To enable swap at boot time add the following to
/etc/fstab
/swap1 swap swap defaults 0 0
- To print swap summary
$ sudo swapon -s Filename Type Size Used Priority /swap1 file 4194300 0 -1
Alternatively use free -m to see swap size, etc.$ free -m total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 992 778 214 64 28 231 -/+ buffers/cache: 517 474 Swap: 4095 0 4095
- To disable swap
$ sudo swapoff /swap1
This also removes it from /etc/fstab to not set it at boot time.