How to Add Swap Space on Debian 12
This guide is applicable only for KVM based VPSes and dedicated servers, If you wish to increase swap on your OpenVZ based VPS please contact us via a Support ticket from the client area.
Check Swap Information
Command to check swap size.
swapon --show
Output:
root@vps:~# swapon --show
NAME TYPE SIZE USED PRIO
/dev/vda1 partition 487M 0B -2
Or you can check using free
command.
free -m
Output:
root@vps:~# free -m
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 1967 303 918 0 898 1663
Swap: 486 0 486
NOTE: If the output is empty, it means that swap space is not enabled yet on your system.
Add Swap to your VPS
Command to create a Swap file.
NOTE: We are adding 1GB if you want to add a different size then you can replace it in place of 1G
fallocate -l 1G /swapfile
or
dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1024 count=1048576
Set write permission.[Default permissions only enable for root user]
chmod 600 /swapfile
Set up a swap area on the file.
mkswap /swapfile
Output:
root@vps:~# mkswap /swapfile
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 1024 MiB (1073737728 bytes)
no label, UUID=d8dd15f9-036e-40e5-946f-83bb5e1341a3
Activate the swap file.
swapon /swapfile
Open the following file and add the given content to change it to permanent.
nano /etc/fstab
Add the following line.
/swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0
Now check the swap size.
swapon --show
or
free -m
Output:
root@vps:~# swapon --show
NAME TYPE SIZE USED PRIO
/dev/vda1 partition 487M 0B -2
/swapfile file 1024M 0B -3
root@vps:~# free -m
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 1967 307 913 0 900 1659
Swap: 1510 0 1510
NOTE: Now the added swap space can be seen.
Remove Swap file
Deactivate the swap space.
swapoff -v /swapfile
Output:
root@vps:~# swapoff -v /swapfile
swapoff /swapfile
Next, remove the following line from the file /etc/fstab
/swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0
Command to remove the file.
rm /swapfile
This concludes our topic of configuring swap in Debian.
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