How To Add Swap Space On Ubuntu
In this post, I will guide you on How To Add Swap Space On Ubuntu. Use the hard disk as temporary memory to supplement physical memory (RAM) when handling tasks that are larger than the capacity of existing RAM.
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What is Swap Space?
Swap space is a space on the hard disk which is a substitute of physical memory… Virtual memory is a combination of RAM and disk space that running processes can use. Swap space is the portion of virtual memory that is on the hard disk, used when RAM is full.
Swap is not considered a replacement for physical memory. Since swap space is part of the hard drive, it has a slower access time than physical memory by about 10 to 1000 times. If your system is constantly running out of memory, you should add more RAM.
Steps To Add Swap Space On Ubuntu
| Note: Use root or user with sudo privileges can activate the swap file. |
I will create a 4GB swap file. You can add a swap file with the size you want.
1. Create a swap file.
sudo fallocate -l 4G /swapfile
If faillocate is not installed or an error message saying fallocate failed: Operation not supported then use the following command to create the swap file:
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1024 count=4194304
| Note: bs=1024 means read and write up to 1024 bytes at a time and count=(1024 x 4096)MB size of the file. |
2. Set the file permissions to 600 for the swap file.
sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
3. Create a swap area on the file:
sudo mkswap /swapfile
You should see the output like this:
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 4 GiB (4294963200 bytes)
no label, UUID=9888e511-ff44-4cb3-a999-c9b072a75a67
4. Enable the swap file:
sudo swapon /swapfile
To make the change permanent open the /etc/fstab file:
sudo nano /etc/fstab
Paste the following line:
/swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0
5. Now verify the swap file was created by using the swapon command.
sudo swapon --show
You should see the output like this:
NAME TYPE SIZE USED PRIO
/swapfile file 4G 0B -2
Using the free command:
sudo free -h
You should see the output like this:
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 1.9Gi 885Mi 189Mi 61Mi 912Mi 849Mi
Swap: 4.0Gi 0B 4.0Gi
Adjusting The Swappiness Value
You can check the current swappiness value by typing the following command:
cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
Output:
60
To set how often the kernel can use the swap file, open the file /etc/sysctl.conf.
sudo nano /etc/sysctl.conf
And add the line below:
vm.swappiness=10
| Note: The default value of how frequent swap space can be used is 60 (maximum value is 100). The higher the number, the more frequent swap space utilization by the kernel. |
Removing a Swap File
1. Deactivate the swap space:
sudo swapoff -v /swapfile
2. Remove /swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0 line has been entered from the /etc/fstab file.
3. Remove swapfile file.
sudo rm /swapfile
This is the end of the How To Add Swap Space On Ubuntu.
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