Thought this was worth to share here in these times of financial depression. A lot of applications today needs a lot of RAM but RAM isn't cheap, so here's how you can add a SWAP file and theoretically expand your servers memory without paying more. sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/root/swap.img bs=1024 count=1048576 sudo chmod 600 /root/swap.img sudo mkswap /root/swap.img sudo swapon /root/swap.img if(window.hljsLoader && !document.currentScript.parentNode.hasAttribute('data-s9e-livepreview-onupdate')) { window.hljsLoader.highlightBlocks(document.currentScript.parentNode); } So basically, this will create a 1GB file named: /root/swap.img , set appropriate permissions (only root can read and write), convert it to a swap space and then turn it on. To preserve this space after reboot, use a cron job: # sudo crontab -e @reboot sudo swapon /root/swap.img if(window.hljsLoader && !document.currentScript.parentNode.hasAttribute('data-s9e-livepreview-onupdate')) { window.hljsLoader.highlightBlocks(document.currentScript.parentNode); }

Thanks for sharing! And @Marco_Weiss , it should be fine to just delete the file. Just remember to run swapoff first: sudo swapoff /root/swap.img if(window.hljsLoader && !document.currentScript.parentNode.hasAttribute('data-s9e-livepreview-onupdate')) { window.hljsLoader.highlightBlocks(document.currentScript.parentNode); }

How to add SWAP space to a Linux server

Samuel_Oldfield

Thought this was worth to share here in these times of financial depression. A lot of applications today needs a lot of RAM but RAM isn't cheap, so here's how you can add a SWAP file and theoretically expand your servers memory without paying more.

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/root/swap.img bs=1024 count=1048576
sudo chmod 600 /root/swap.img
sudo mkswap /root/swap.img
sudo swapon /root/swap.img

So basically, this will create a 1GB file named: /root/swap.img, set appropriate permissions (only root can read and write), convert it to a swap space and then turn it on. To preserve this space after reboot, use a cron job:

# sudo crontab -e

@reboot sudo swapon /root/swap.img

Marco_Weiss

This is great, I've managed to create multiple swap files using this method. But how do I remove a swap when I don't need it anymore? Is it sdafe to just run swapoff and then delete the file or is there anything else I need to do?

Sebastian_Mannerheim

Thanks for sharing!

And @Marco_Weiss, it should be fine to just delete the file. Just remember to run swapoff first:

sudo swapoff /root/swap.img

Kenneth_Crayton

This is the appropriate way to do it. Tho a swap partition would provide slightly better performance than a swap file. But I guess that's not possible to do on a cloud server, so this is the second best option available. 🤔

Smith_Weason

Kenneth_Crayton It's possible with KVM, just now with the API yet. Tho there won't be much performance difference considering SSD's are used, at least not on GNU+Linux. Windows might have some trouble tho but that shit's expensive anyway so if you gonna use that you could as well spend some extra cash on more RAM 😉