Linux Tips: More swap with a swap file

You installed a new Linux system, but forgot to set enough swap space for your needs. Do you need to repartition and reinstall? No, the swap utilities on Linux allow you to make a real file and use it as swap

space.

The trick is to make a file and then tell the swapon program to use it. Here's how to create, for example, a 64megs swap file on your root partition (of course make sure you have at least 64 megs free):

dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1024 count=65536

This will make a 64 megs (about 67 millions bytes) file on your hard drive. You now need to initialize it:

mkswap /swapfile 65536 sync.And you can then add it to your swap pool:

swapon /swapfile.

With that you have 64 megs of swap added. Don't forget to add the swapon command to your startup files so the command will be repeated at each reboot.

"Linux Tips: More swap with a swap file"

Reference: tipoftheweek.darkelf.net