Swap memory or Swap space is reserved space on disk which is part of virtual memory system. Swap space is configured as either partition or file on Linux. It can be added or removed any time. Operating System uses the configured swap space on disk when System runs out of RAM. Inactive parts of RAM called pages are moved to swap space to make room for frequently used resources. Inactive data from swap memory is retrieved and placed in RAM on demand. This process of retrieving data storing data from secondary storage for primary memory (RAM) is called paging.

Using swap space has it’s own advantages and disadvantages. Enabling swap memory can make the system stable. So that to free up memory sever won’t start killing applications if it runs out of memory. Some times it can even cause a crash, which can cause loss of data or even down time. On the other hand using swap is expensive and not that much effective in terms of performance, since secondary memory (HDD & SSD) are much slower than RAM.

It is not recommended to use swap on SSDs because of it’s hardware degradation over time. Flash cells in SSDs have a limited lifespan. Every write cycle effectively erasure erodes a memory cell. At some point in time which might stop working. Old SSD used to fail several year ago, but new SSDs became relatively smart(firmware) . Life span of SSDs can be measured using TWM(Total bytes written or TeraBytes written) which is the about of bytes writable before SSD fails. Alternatively try to add more RAM if it is a virtual machine instead of creating swap space on SSD which will lead to better results.
Yet you can create swap on SSD, but it is generally recommended for systems using traditional HDD

Check if swap is enabled

To check if swap is enabled we can use the command swapon .

swapon --show

If you don’t see any output for the command swapon –show . It means swap is not enabled .

NAME      TYPE      SIZE   USED PRIO
/dev/dm-1 partition 976M 473.8M   -2

Swap space usage can also be checked using another command free, which displays system’s overall memory usage including swap .

free -m

          total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available   
Mem:       985         608         140           0         237         203 
Swap:        0           0           0 

Swap is said to be disabled if you see 0 for total and used for swap in the output of free -m command.

If system is using swap space, output of free -m would be something like as follows

          total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available   Mem:       985         608         140           0         237         203 
Swap:        975           438           537 

There are two types of swap spaces, Swap Partition and Swap File. During installation Linux creates swap partition for swap space. We can create swap space either by using partition or file

Create Swap Space by using Swap Partition

If you have enough space on hard disk and provision to create a new partition. We can create new partition and mark it as swap space by using command “mkswap“.

Use command fdisk to create additional partition to use it for swap space

You can list the existing hard disks (devices) using command lsblk .

Display existing partitions on hard drives/ block devices

lsblk -io KNAME,TYPE,SIZE,MODEL 

KNAME  TYPE   SIZE MODEL
sda    disk  28.4G 
sda1   part  28.4G 
sr0    rom   75.6M CD-ROM          

List partitions

fdisk -l

Start fdisk in interactive mode by passing selected disk as an argument

fdisk /dev/<device name>

fdisk /dev/sda

You will be taken to interactive prompt. By using different commands we can edit partitions. To learn more about fdisk read article on fdisk.

use the sub-command “p” to list existing partition table. “n” to create new partition. Use sub-command “m” to list all supported commands by category.

Here are steps to following inside fdisk interactive mode

1. Create new partition using sub-command n . You will be prompted to enter first cylinder, leave it to default ( most of the cases), then you will be asked to enter last cylinder value, here you can enter size of the partition. For suppose if it is 1000MB you can give it as +1000M
2. Once new partition is created, we can assign a partition type to it using sub-command “t”. Press “t” and hit enter. You will be prompted to enter hex code for partition type(refer partition types using command “l”). In our case it is 82 which is Linux swap partition type. type 82 and hit enter
3. Press “w” to update partition table

When you create a new partition using sub command “n”, if there isn’t enough space. You will get the following message. In this case you can create swap using other method, which makes use of file as swap space.

Command (m for help): n           
All space for primary partitions is in use.

After you exit from fdisk interactive mode, use partprobe command to force the kernel to re-read partition table to avoid necessity of rebooting system.

partprobe

Use command mkswap to mark created partition as swap space. Replace X with created partition number in the following commands

mkswap /dev/sdaX

Finally, turn on the swap using command swapon

swapon /dev/sdaX

Alternatively you can use swapon -a to enable all listed Linux swap spaces in /etc/fstab.

swapon -a

To make this swap space permanent across reboots we have to edit /etc/fstab. Open /etc/fstab using your favorite editor and add the following line

/dev/sdaX             swap            swap            default          0   0

Replace sdaX with the swap partition you created ( which will be something like sda4)

Create Swap Space by using Swap File

Prerequisites

• root access or non-root user with sudo privileges
• Commands fallocate or dd, chmod, mkswap, swapon

Create file using command fallocate which will be used as swap space

sudo fallocate -l 1G /swapfile

(OR)

The command dd can also be used instead of fallocate to create file for swap space

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1024 count=1048576

Where,

1. if=/dev/zero is the special file which provides as many null characters as are read from it.
2. of=/swapfile Read from if (/dev/zero) and writes to /swapfile
3. bs=1024 read and write 1024 bytes at a time
4. count=1048576 write only 1048576 Blocks

Before we proceed further we have to change permissions of swap file. Swap file should not be readable by any user other than root. Allowing other users to read or write swap file makes system vulnerable to threats.

Change permissions of /swapfile

sudo chmod 600 /swapfile

You can verify permissions using ls command

ls -lh /swapfile

-rw------- 1 root root 1.0G Mar 23 17:38 /swapfile

Make sure root owns the swap file and only root can read and write for security reasons.

Setup swap area on file using command “mkswap“

sudo mkswap /swapfile

Now, here comes the final part. Activates the swap by using created swapfile

sudo swapon /swapfile

Make the swap file permanent across reboots

To make swap file permanent we have to add it to the /etc/fstab file. Open /etc/fstab with you favorite text editor

sudo vim /etc/fstab

Add the following line at the bottom of the file (/etc/fstab)

/swapfile   swap    swap    sw  0   0 

Tune the Swappiness Value

Swappiness is the property of Linux kernel which determines how often system will use swap space. Swappiness value can be anything in between 0 and 100. Lower value of swappiness makes kernel less dependent of swap space and avoid using swap when ever possible on the other hand higher value makes kernel to use swap space more aggressively.

The default value of swappiness depends on operating system. On some machines it’s 60, on centOS 7 it is 30.

See current swappiness by reading file /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

30

You change the kernel property swappiness by using command sysctl or updating /proc/sys/vm/swappiness file in proc file system.

sudo sysctl vm.swappiness=30

(OR)

 echo 30 > /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

To make this change permanent update file /etc/sysctl.conf

echo 'vm.swappiness=30' >> /etc/sysctl.conf

For better performance on production machines it is recommended to set swappiness as low as possible. Possibly 10 or around.

Disable swap on Linux

Assuming swap is enabled by file and located at /swapfile

$ sudo swapoff /swapfile 
$ swapon -s 

Alternatively you can use following command to turn off all swap spaces

swapoff -a

Remove swap entry (/swapfile swap swap sw 0 0 ) from /etc/fstab, so that it won’t be enabled on reboot

If you think you no longer need swap. You can delete swapfile created on disk to free up space on disk

sudo rm /swapfile