Creating a Swap File

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This HOWTO has been contributed by Gerald J. Normandin Jr. It has been found at: http://rio.vg/zaurus/

Swap in RAM Here's step-by-step instructions for building a swapfile in ram so you can have more memory available for applications...

  • Decide how much swap you want. You can always change it later painlessly. I went with 8 megs.
  • Open up the terminal/console
  • Create the swapfile with the dd command: 
 dd if=/dev/zero of=/home/root/swapfile bs=1024 count=8192

That will create an 8 meg file. Change the "count" field to whatever size you like.

  • Format the swapfile with the following command: 
 mkswap /home/root/swapfile
  • Make linux recognize and utilize the swapfile: 
 swapon /home/root/swapfile
  • Run the "free" command, to make sure the swapfile is properly recognized and running.
  • Add the swap to the startup scripts. Add "swapon /home/root/swapfile" to the bottom of /etc/rc.d/rc.local with vi or some other text editor, then: 
 cd /etc/rc.d/rc5.d
 ln -s ../rc.local S49local

You'll now have an 8 meg swapfile in the storage area. Since the swap is just as fast as the normal ram, you shouldn't see any performance degradation when "swapping".

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