Increase swap

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Step 1 – Checking the System for Swap Information

Before we begin, we can check if the system already has some swap space available. It is possible to have multiple swap files or swap partitions, but generally one should be enough.

We can see if the system has any configured swap by typing:

sudo swapon --show

If you don’t get back any output, this means your system does not have swap space available currently.

You can verify that there is no active swap using the free utility:

free -h

 

Step 2 – Checking Available Space on the Hard Drive Partition

Before we create our swap file, we’ll check our current disk usage to make sure we have enough space. Do this by entering:

df -h

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev            488M     0  488M   0% /dev
tmpfs           100M  4.5M   96M   5% /run
/dev/vda1        25G  989M   23G   5% /
tmpfs           499M     0  499M   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
tmpfs           499M     0  499M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs           100M     0  100M   0% /run/user/1001

The device with / in the Mounted on column is our disk in this case. We have plenty of space available in this example (only 1.4G used). Your usage will probably be different.

Although there are many opinions about the appropriate size of a swap space, it really depends on your personal preferences and your application requirements. Generally, an amount equal to or double the amount of RAM on your system is a good starting point. Another good rule of thumb is that anything over 4G of swap is probably unnecessary if you are just using it as a RAM fallback.

Step 3 – Creating a Swap File

Now that we know our available hard drive space, we can create a swap file on our filesystem. We will allocate a file of the swap size that we want called swapfile in our root (/) directory.

The best way of creating a swap file is with the fallocate program. This command instantly creates a file of the specified size.

Since the server in our example has 1G of RAM, we will create a 1G file in this guide. Adjust this to meet the needs of your own server:

sudo fallocate -l 1G /swapfile

ls -lh /swapfile

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.0G May 29 17:34 /swapfile

Our file has been created with the correct amount of space set aside.

Step 4 – Enabling the Swap File

Now that we have a file of the correct size available, we need to actually turn this into swap space.

First, we need to lock down the permissions of the file so that only the users with root privileges can read the contents. This prevents normal users from being able to access the file, which would have significant security implications.

Make the file only accessible to root by typing:

sudo chmod 600 /swapfile

Verify the permissions change by typing:

ls -lh /swapfile

-rw------- 1 root root 1.0G May 29 17:34 /swapfile

As you can see, only the root user has the read and write flags enabled.

We can now mark the file as swap space by typing:

sudo mkswap /swapfile

Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 1024 MiB (1073737728 bytes)
no label, UUID=b591444e-c12b-45a6-90fc-e8b24c67c006f

After marking the file, we can enable the swap file, allowing our system to start using it:

sudo swapon /swapfile

Verify that the swap is available by typing:

sudo swapon --show

NAME      TYPE  SIZE USED PRIO
/swapfile file 1024M   0B   -2

We can check the output of the free utility again to corroborate our findings:

free -h

              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:          990Mi        37Mi       860Mi       4.0Mi        92Mi       834Mi
Swap:         1.0Gi          0B       1.0Gi

Our swap has been set up successfully and our operating system will begin to use it as necessary.

Step 5 – Making the Swap File Permanent

Our recent changes have enabled the swap file for the current session. However, if we reboot, the server will not retain the swap settings automatically. We can change this by adding the swap file to our /etc/fstab file.

Back up the /etc/fstab file in case anything goes wrong:

sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak

Add the swap file information to the end of your /etc/fstab file by typing:

echo '/swapfile none swap sw 0 0' | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab

Next we’ll review some settings we can update to tune our swap space.