Create a Linux swap file

  • Last updated on: 2018-11-29
  • Authored by: Trey Hoehne

Swap is space on a disk that is reserved for use as virtual memory. When a Linux® server runs out of memory, the kernel can move inactive processes into swap space to make room for active processes in the working memory.

By default, a swap partition is not present on Cloud Servers, but you can add swap to a server by allocating a swap file. The performance of a swap file is similar to that of a swap partition. However, using a swap file makes it easier to control the swap size without repartitioning a volume. You can control how aggressively the server uses this swap space by modifying the system’s swappiness value.

The steps below show how to create a swap file on Linux and modify a system’s swappiness value.

How do I add a swap file?

The following steps show how to add 1GB of swap to your server:

  1. Create the file that you want to use for swap by entering the following command:

    sudo fallocate -l 1G /mnt/1GB.swap

    If the fallocate command fails or isn’t installed, run the following command:

    sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/1GB.swap bs=1024 count=1048576
  2. Format the swap file by entering the following command:

    sudo mkswap /mnt/1GB.swap
  3. Add the file to the system as a swap file by entering the following command:

    sudo swapon /mnt/1GB.swap
  4. Add the following line to the end of /etc/fstab to make the change permanent:

    /mnt/1GB.swap  none  swap  sw 0  0
  5. To change the swappiness value, add the following line to the file at /etc/sysctl.conf:


    Start with a value of 10 and increase if it necessary. A typical default value for swappiness is 60. The higher the number (up to 100), the more often the system uses swap.

    The degree to which swappiness affects performance depends on how your memory is currently used. We recommend that you experiment to find an optimal value. At 0, the system only uses the swap file when it runs entirely out of memory. Higher values enable the system to swap idle processes out in order to free memory for disk caching, potentially improving overall system performance.

  6. Check that the swap file was created by entering the following command:

    sudo swapon -s
  7. Reboot the server to ensure that the changes take effect.

Note: Following these instructions on a new Rackspace server makes the resulting swap file world-readable. To prevent the file from being world-readable, you should set up the correct permissions on the swap file by running the following command:

chmod 600 /mnt/1GB.swap

In most cases, the only user that needs access to the swap partition is the root user.

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