If you need additional swap space to improve your system performance. You have two different ways: add/upgrade a swap partition or create a swap file. But changing the size or create a new swap partition is not easy, the best solution is to create a new swap file. This articles help you add/create swap file very quickly.
Creating swap file on Linux
Login as root and type the following command to create 512MB swap file
[root@lifelinux ~]# dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1024 count=524288
Where,
if=/dev/zero: read from /dev/zero instead of stdin
of=/swapfile: write to /swapfile instead of stdout
bs=1024: blocksize = 1024 bytes
count=524288: number of blocks are 524288
Setup the swap file with the command: mkswap. Type following command to setup your swap file:
[root@lifelinux ~]# mkswap /swapfile
To enable the swap file immediately but not automatically at boot time
[root@lifelinux ~]# swapon /swapfile
To activate the new swap file automatically at the boot, you need to edit the file /etc/fstab, enter
[root@lifelinux ~]# vi /etc/fstab
Add the following line at end of the file
/swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0
To verify the swap file is working fine with these commands:
[root@lifelinux ~]# free -m
Or
[root@lifelinux ~]# cat /proc/swaps
Recommended size of linux swap
1 GB RAM —> 2 GB of Swap file
2 GB RAM —> 4 GB of Swap file
4 GB RAM —> 8 GB of Swap file
8 GB RAM —> 12 GB of Swap file
16 GB RAM —> 24 GB of Swap file
32 GB RAM —> 32 GB of Swap file
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