How to Add Swap Space on Ubuntu?
May 5, 2020 / Eternal Team
What is Swap Memory ?
- Swap is a space on a hard disk that is utilized when the physical RAM memory is full. It is utilized at the point when a Linux framework comes up short on RAM, latent pages are moved from the RAM to the swap space.
- Swap space can appear as either a devoted swap segment or a swap record. For the most part when running Ubuntu on a virtual machine, a swap part is absent, and the main alternative is to make a swap record.
Before You Begin
- To verify that Swap is installed Open terminal and write the following command
$ sudo swapon --show
- Start by creating a file which will be used for swap:
$ sudo fallocate -l 1G /swapfile
- ( Optional Troubleshoot )If fallocate is not installed or you get 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=1048576
- Only the root user should be able to write and read the swap file. Set the correct permissions by typing:
$ sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
- Use the mkswap utility to set up a Linux swap area on the file:
$ sudo mkswap /swapfile
- Activate the swap file using the following command:
$ sudo swapon /swapfile
- To make the change permanent open the /etc/fstab file:
$ sudo nano /etc/fstab
- and paste the following line:
/swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0
- Verify that the swap is active by using either the swapon
$ sudo swapon --show
