Swap space is a dedicated area on a hard drive that serves as virtual memory for your operating system. It allows your system to temporarily store data that is not actively used in RAM. Creating a swap partition on CentOS/AlmaLinux can help improve overall system performance and prevent out-of-memory errors. In this article, we will guide you through the process of creating a swap partition on CentOS/AlmaLinux.
Step 1: Checking Existing Swap Space: Before creating a new swap partition, it’s essential to check if any existing swap space is already configured on your system. You can use the “swapon” command to verify if a swap partition or file is in use:
free -m
If the value of ‘Swap:’ in the output shows zero, that means there is no swap space created.
total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 7820 112 7643 8 65 7537 Swap: 0 0 0
If this command returns any output, it means that a swap partition or file is already in use. In that case, you can either resize the existing swap partition or create an additional one if needed.
Step 2: Partitioning the Disk:
Now, let’s create the swap file. I’m going to create a 2GB file. However, you may change it depending on your needs. It is recommended to set the swap file size based on your system’s needs. The common practice is to allocate a swap space equal to the amount of RAM or, in some cases, half the amount of RAM.
It is often recommended to allocate a swap space that is approximately half the size of the available physical memory. However, it is generally not recommended to create a swap file larger than 4GB.
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swap count=2048 bs=1MiB
Now Set the correct permissions on the swap file:
Adjust the permissions on the swap file to restrict access to only the root user:
sudo chmod 600 /swap
Step 3: Formatting the Swap Partition:
Use the following command to format the swap file & Make the swap file usable
sudo mkswap /swap
Step 4: Activating the Swap Partition:
Now enable the swap partition
sudo swapon /swap
Now, we can test if the swap partition was created and running correctly. Run the memory checking command again:
free -m
Step 5: Making the Swap Partition Permanent:
To make the swap partition automatically mounted after each reboot, execute the following command to add it to your system’s fstab config.
sudo echo "/swap swap swap sw 0 0" >> /etc/fstab
Reboot the system using the following command.
sudo reboot
Step 6: Verifying the Swap Partition:
You can use the “free” command to check if the swap partition is now active
free -h
The output should display information about the available swap space.
By following the steps outlined in this article, you should be able to create a swap partition on CentOS/AlmaLinux. Remember to adjust the partition identifiers and device names according to your system configuration. Having an adequately sized swap space can help improve the performance and stability of your system.