How to Add Swap Space on Ubuntu 22.04

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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

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Command to check swap size.

swapon --show

Output:

root@crown:~# swapon --show
NAME      TYPE SIZE USED PRIO
/swap.img file 1.9G 1.9G   -2

Or you can check using the free command.

free -m

Output:

root@crown:~# free -m
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:             971         779          58           8         133          47
Swap:           1941        1937           4

NOTE: If the output is empty, it means that swap space is not enabled yet on your system.

Add Swap

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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

To set write permission.[Default permissions only enable for root user]

chmod 600 /swapfile

To set up a swap area on the file.

mkswap /swapfile

Output:

Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 1024 MiB (1073737728 bytes)
no label, UUID=47ffc906-778b-493b-9abd-d0845ea38bce

To 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@crown:~# swapon --show
NAME      TYPE  SIZE  USED PRIO
/swap.img file  1.9G  1.9G   -2
/swapfile file 1024M 59.5M   -3

root@crown:~# free -m
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:             971         779          73           8         118          54
Swap:           2965        1996         969

NOTE: Now the added swap space can be seen.

Remove Swap

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Deactivate the swap space.

swapoff -v /swapfile

Output:

root@crown:~# 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 ubuntu.

If you can not configure and face technical difficulties, kindly reach out to us via Support Ticket.