Swap Partitions & Files

###Swap Partitions & Files###

Features:

1. Extra, virtual RAM for the OS

Steps:

1. Identify current swap space

a. swapon -s - enumerates partitions and/or files, which constitute swap storage

b. free -m

2. Select target drive and provision swap partition

a. fdisk /dev/sdb

b. n

c. 2

d. 500

e. +512 (cylinder 562) - 63 cylinders are required for 512MB

f. t - change type

g. 82 - Linux Swap/Solaris

h. w - committ changes to disk

3. Create the swap file system on the raw partition: /dev/sdb2

a. mkswap /dev/sdb2

4. Enable swapping - publish the swap space to the kernel

a. swapon /dev/sdb2 - this enables swapping on /dev/sdb2

5. update /etc/fstab

a. /dev/sdb2 swap swap defaults 0 0

swapoff /dev/sdb2 - disables swapping on /dev/sdb2

Task:

1. Improve system performance by distributing swapping to /dev/sdb2

a. swapon /dev/sdb2

b. swapoff /dev/sda6

c. disable /dev/sda6 via /etc/fstab