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How To Create a Linux Swap File

Aaron Kili Last Updated: July 14, 2023 Read Time: 2 mins Linux Commands 6 Comments

In this article, we will explain swap space, and learn how to create swap space using a
swap file in Linux: this is important in case we don’t have a swap partition created on the
hard disk.

Swap space/partition is space on a disk created for use by the operating system when
memory has been fully utilized. It can be used as virtual memory for the system; it can
either be a partition or a file on a disk.

When the kernel runs out of memory, it can move idle/inactive processes into swap
creating room for active processes in the working memory. This is memory management
that involves swapping sections of memory to and from virtual memory.

Suggested Read: 8 Useful Commands to Monitor Swap Space Usage in Linux

With that said, below are the steps we can follow to create a swap space using a file.

How to Create and Enable Swap in Linux

1. In this example, we will create a swap file of size 2GB using the dd command as follows.
Note that bs=1024 means read and write up to 1024 bytes at a time and count = (1024 x
2048)MB size of the file.

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/swapfile bs=1024 count=2097152

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Alternatively, use the fallocate command as follows.

# fallocate --length 2GiB /mnt/swapfile

And then set the appropriate permissions on the file; make it readable only by root user as
follows.

# chmod 600 /mnt/swapfile

2. Now setup the file for swap space with the mkwap command.

# mkswap /mnt/swapfile

3. Next, enable the swap file and add it to the system as a swap file.

# swapon /mnt/swapfile

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4. Afterwards, enable the swap file to be mounted at boot time. Edit the /etc/fstab file and
add the following line in it.

/mnt/swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0

In the line above, each field means:

/mnt/swapfile – device/file name

swap – defines device mount point

swap – specifies the file-system type

defaults – describes the mount options

0 – specifies the option to be used by the dump program

0 – specifies the fsck command option

6. To set how often the swap file can be used by the kernel, open the /etc/sysctl.conf file
and add the line below.

Note that the default value of how frequent swap space can be used is 60 (maximum value
is 100). The higher the number, the more frequent swap space utilization by the kernel.
When the value is set to 0, the swap file will only be used if the operating system has fully
utilized memory.

vm.swappiness=10

6. Now verify the swap file was created using the swapon command.

# swapon -s
OR
# free
OR
# cat /proc/swaps

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Check Swap Space in Linux

We can optionally reboot the system to effect the above changes using the following
command.

# reboot

Remember to also read through these useful Linux memory management guides:

1. How to Clear RAM Memory Cache, Buffer and Swap Space on Linux
2. 10 ‘free’ Commands to Check Memory Usage in Linux
3. Smem – Reports Memory Consumption Per-Process and Per-User Basis in Linux
4. Find Top Running Processes by Highest Memory and CPU Usage in Linux

That’s It! If you have any issues, use the feedback form below to send us any questions or
important additional ideas to this topic.

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Aaron Kili is a Linux and F.O.S.S enthusiast, an upcoming Linux SysAdmin, web
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6 Comments Leave a Reply

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rabitu171
January 13, 2022 at 8:00 pm

Really helped me out because I forgot to create a swap partition on my OpenSUSE

install…

Reply

mohamed
February 22, 2020 at 6:25 pm

Thank you for this amazing article, it helped me to create a Swap file in Linux.

Reply

Aaron Kili
February 24, 2020 at 12:46 pm

@mohamed

Great! Many thanks for the feedback.

Reply

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Nityanand Shet
March 28, 2019 at 4:48 pm

mkswap /mnt/swapfile step is missing i guess. I am able to create swap after only
this step.

# swapoff -v /swapfile
# chmod 600 /mnt/swapfile
# swapon /mnt/swapfile
# swapon: /mnt/swapfile: read swap header failed: Invalid argument
# mkswap /mnt/swapfile
# swapon /mnt/swapfile
# free -m

Sample Output

total used free shared buff/cache

available
Mem: 15883 2337 9955 16 3591
13206
Swap: 2047 0 2047

Reply

oldgaro
December 21, 2017 at 3:37 am

Quoted:
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I’d like to add another detail. In this line one may choose to use other units to make
things more simple:

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile1 bs=1024 count=524288

You can turn it into:

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile1 bs=1M count=512

This means that the block size is 1 MB, so count=512 means “I need 512 megs”,
there is no need to do any other calculations.

Reply

Aaron Kili
December 27, 2017 at 1:13 pm

@oldgaro

Thanks for the useful tip, it’s really handy.

Reply

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