Increase Swap/Page File? Change it's place on another drive?

[SyncroScales]

Hi,

Linux Mint xfce 20.2. Swappiness is set to 30.

Is there a way to increase the swap/page file? Or change it's place on another drive? When using Windows you can increase the swap/page files size. The rule seemed to be double the RAM. You can also put the swap/page file on another drive instead of only C drive, if there are multiple HDD's or SSD's.

I notice with 4 GB of RAM that the swap/page file is only half of that. If multiple tabs are open or YouTube links are open in multiple tabs, the page file starts to fill up as does the RAM. But the system can hang.

I understand that with Windows you can put a swap/page file onto D Drive, and double the RAM. But if that OS needs to, it still puts swap/page file onto C Drive or other drives and D Drive if needed.

Yes the solution is more RAM. I don't know how Linux handles this part of the system though.

Thanks.

[dave0808]

There are 2 types of swap available to us. The first is a dedicated swap partition on the disc. The second is through swap files, which I guess is analogous to the Windows pagefile.sys (though I'm no Windows expert).

You can add more if you need to.

If you have a normal hard drive, they're obviously slow, and the read/write time is going to be frustrating - better to close some tabs

If you had SSD, then it'll be quicker than a HDD of course, but clearly won't match RAM for speed.

The following links should prove useful and can show you have to add more, whether it be through a file or additional partition...

• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq
• https://askubuntu.com/questions/33697/h ... stallation

Note that if you are encrypting your HOME or disk, then you should ensure that the swap file(s) is/are encrypted too, else you risk leaking information.

[Aztaroth]

Hi,

Linux Mint xfce 20.2. Swappiness is set to 30.

Is there a way to increase the swap/page file? Or change it's place on another drive? When using Windows you can increase the swap/page files size. The rule seemed to be double the RAM. You can also put the swap/page file on another drive instead of only C drive, if there are multiple HDD's or SSD's.

I notice with 4 GB of RAM that the swap/page file is only half of that. If multiple tabs are open or YouTube links are open in multiple tabs, the page file starts to fill up as does the RAM. But the system can hang.

I understand that with Windows you can put a swap/page file onto D Drive, and double the RAM. But if that OS needs to, it still puts swap/page file onto C Drive or other drives and D Drive if needed.

Yes the solution is more RAM. I don't know how Linux handles this part of the system though.

Thanks.

There are 2 ways to set your swap :
- swapfile in your system disk
- swap partition where you want

In the Hibernation Guide of this Forum :
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=284100#3
Chapters 3 and 4 are dedicated to create a custom swapfile and setting the kernel to be able to use it.
If your goal doesn't include using the hibernation feature, you can stop after these.

[SyncroScales]

Thanks Aztaroth.

Is there a different guide to having multiple swap files, as mentioned in that [GUIDE] you posted?

When do multiple swap files on different drives become useful?

[Aztaroth]

Thanks Aztaroth.

Is there a different guide to having multiple swap files, as mentioned in that [GUIDE] you posted?

When do multiple swap files on different drives become useful?

Hi,
Here is the tuto to hibernate from a swap partition :
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=273202

IMHO, multiple swap files have no real interest. In your case (4Gb RAM), one is almost mandatory because you may run out of memory. Swap partitions are the old type, swap files are the modern way because they're simpler to manage.
However if you want to use hibernation, you should have a file or partition twice the size of your RAM because, as it is low, you may already have "things" in your swap at the moment you decide to hibernate. An 8Gb swapfile may dramatically decrease free space in your system partition.
My conclusion would be : if you have a large system partition with a lot of free space, go for the swap file. If you may run out of space on the system partition, go for a swap partition.

[SyncroScales]

Thanks Aztaroth,

I am not really interested in Hibernation. Just the swap files or partition.

When watching the swap exchange with RAM, it's 1MB or 2 MB per second. I thought that having 4 GB swap or the swap on a different HDD would speed it up a little bit. Does higher cache on HDD's or different types of HDD's affect the swap speed? E.G.: Western Digital (Green, Blue, Black, Red, Purple, etc)

Does the other HDD or SSD have to be ext3 or ext4 file system? Can it be FAT32, extFAT or NTFS, etc? Is this when a swap partition would be used with a different file system?

Will the swap file or partition make fragmentation? How do Linux OS's handle this?

Gparted - It seems there is not a dedicated swap partition. /dev/sdh1 fat32 /boot.efi, /dev/sdh2/extended, /dev/sdh5/ext4

[Termy]

Generating, loading, and making swap space persistent can be done via the terminal, and is fairly straightforward. Nowadays, we use swap files, which, as someone else has stated, is like the pagefile you get in Windows (I used to change that, too), at least as I knew it back in Windows 8.1. To generate a new swap file in Linux, it can be done with:

Code: Select all

# Generates empty file of 128MiB in size.
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/new_swapfile bs=1M count=128

# Changes file's mode for security reasons. 
sudo chmod 600 /new_swapfile

# Sets up file for use as swap space.
sudo mkswap /new_swapfile

# Adds file to system's swap space for immediate use.
sudo swapon /new_swapfile

Which I ran just now in a couple of seconds. I always set up my own swap files, and have done so for years (before it became the norm), so I'm familiar with the process. Where it gets a little interesting is when you want to make it persistent, as it involves editing '/etc/fstab', but even that's straightforward once you know what the fields are and enter things carefully.

The above commands generate a 128MiB (134MB) swap file in '/' called 'new_swapfile', then immediately adds it to the system's swap space for use. If you run swapon you can see the currently assigned swap space, or for more general feedback, you can run free -h.

Before editing '/etc/fstab', I recommend backing the file up, just in-case you bork it; you can do so with:

Code: Select all

sudo cp /etc/fstab{,.bak}

For setting up that 'new_swapfile', in the above example, in '/etc/fstab', the process can be as simple as running this only once:

Code: Select all

sudo sed -i '$a/new_swapfile none swap sw 0 0' /etc/fstab

Or editing the file manually and entering in the values yourself. I recommend that you at least read: man fstab

You can have multiple swap files assigned, BTW, and can even mix and match between swap files and swap partitions.

It gets only a little bit different when it comes to placing a swap file or partition on another drive, but I'll bow out now, as this took long enough to type out.