I quickly checked this by
$ free -m
And the output suggested that there is no swap file provisioned. This is how the output looked –
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 492 109 280 4 102 366
Swap: 0 0 0
Well, so we know the solution for this one, yes, we need to setup a swapfile. The no-frills procedure I followed to setup a swap file of 2 gigs is as below
- Allocate 2 Gb to swap file
$ sudo fallocate -l 2G /swapfile
2. Set appropriate permissions for the swap area file
$ sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
3. Setup the swap area using the space allocated above
$ sudo mkswap /swapfile
4.Enable the swap area
$ sudo swapon /swapfile
5. Veify that swap area has been enabled
$ sudo swapon -s
Output:
Filename Type Size Used Priority
/swapfile file 2097148 44088 -1
6. To make the swap file permanent, we need to add it to /etc/fstab
file. Add the following line to the /etc/fstab
file
/swapfile none swap sw 0 0
Note: Swap is not RAM