HomeLinuxIncrease SWAP space

Increase SWAP space

It has been a common issue that in most cases the RAM gets upgraded after the server is live. For maximum utilization of the resources, it is recommended to create a swap space of twice the amount of RAM. Hence if a RAM of 1GB is present in the server 2GB of swap space should be present. In order to create a swap space of 1GB.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile1 bs=1024 count=1048576
/sbin/mkswap -c -v1 /swapfile1
/sbin/swapon /swapfile1 

Add the entry to /etc/fstab to automate it after a Reboot. Edit /etc/fstab and add the entry below.

/swapfile1              swap                    swap    defaults  0 0

A new swap file can be created with a new name replace the filename “swapfile1” with a new one and follow the same procedure. The above commands are used to create a 1GB swap. If the amount of RAM in the server is 2GB, then a swap file of 4GB is required.

The easiest way to create this swap file is to create four swap files of 1GB each.

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