Hack 69. Create a swap file system.

by Ramesh

Create a file for swap usage as shown below.

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/home/swap-fs bs=1M count=512
512+0 records in
512+0 records out
 
# ls -l /home/swap-fs
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 536870912 Jan  2 23:13 /home/swap-fs

Use mkswap to setup a Linux swap area in the /home/swap-fs file that was created above.

# mkswap /home/swap-fs 
 
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 536866 kB

Once the file is created and has been setup for Linux swap area, it is time to enable the swap using swapon as shown below.

# swapon /home/swap-fs

Add the following line to /etc/fstab and reboot the system for the swap to take into effect.

/home/swap-fs swap swap defaults 0 0