How to Add Swap Space In Ubuntu 22.04

Swap space serves as a critical extension of your system’s RAM, particularly vital for systems with limited physical memory. It acts as a secondary memory resource, allowing your computer to maintain optimal performance when the RAM is fully utilized. Ensuring adequate swap space is essential for preventing performance degradation in systems with restricted RAM capacity.

This article provides a comprehensive guide on how to effectively increase swap space in Ubuntu 22.04, an important step for enhancing system stability and performance. Whether you’re working with resource-intensive applications or managing multiple tasks simultaneously, expanding the swap space in Ubuntu 22.04 can significantly improve your system’s ability to handle these demands smoothly. Follow along as we detail the necessary steps to augment your system’s swap space, ensuring a more efficient and responsive Ubuntu experience.

Steps to Add Swap Space on Ubuntu

Use the following steps to create and add swap memory on your Ubuntu system.

1. Creating a new swap file: The first step in adding swap space is to create a new swap file. You can do this using the “fallocate” command. The following command creates a 4 GB swap file:

   sudo fallocate -l 4G /swapfile 
   

2. Changing file permissions: Next, you need to change the permissions on the swap file to secure it. You can do this with the “chmod” command:

   sudo chmod 600 /swapfile 
   

3. Marking the file as swap: The next step is to mark the file as swap. This can be done with the “mkswap” command:

   sudo mkswap /swapfile 
   

4. Enabling the swap file: Once the file has been marked as swap, you need to enable it. You can do this with the “swapon” command:

   sudo swapon /swapfile 
   

5. Making the swap file persistent: Finally, you need to make the swap file persistent across reboots. To do this, add the following line to the “/etc/fstab” file:

   
   /swapfile   swap   swap     defaults    0 0
   
   

6. Save the changes and close file.

You have successfully added swap space on your Ubuntu system.

Adjust Swappiness Kernel Parameter

“Swappiness” is a kernel parameter in the Linux operating system that controls the balance between swapping out runtime memory to disk and freeing it up to be used by other processes. The value of the swappiness parameter can be set in the range of 0 to 100 and it determines the preference for swapping out processes to disk as memory usage increases.

A value of 0 means the system will not use the swap space, and a value of 100 means the system will actively use the swap space. A value between 60-80 is a good starting point for most systems.

To adjust the swappiness value in Ubuntu, follow these steps:

1. You can use the following command to adjust the swappiness value temporarily:

   sudo sysctl vm.swappiness=10 
   

2. To make the changes permanent. open the sysctl configuration file:

   sudo nano /etc/sysctl.conf 
   

   And add the following line to the file:

   vm.swappiness=10

   1	vm.swappiness=10

   (Replace 10 with the desired value for swappiness, where a value of 0 means the system will not use the swap space, and a value of 100 means the system will actively use the swap space. A value between 60-80 is a good starting point for most systems.)

3. Save and close the file.
4. Update the sysctl settings:

   sudo sysctl -p 
   

5. To verify the change, use the following command:

   cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness 
   

Note: The changes made to the swappiness value will take effect after a reboot.

Remove Swap Space on Ubuntu

To remove swap space on Ubuntu, follow these steps:

1. First, disable the swap file:

   sudo swapoff /swapfile 
   

2. Remove the entry for the swap file from the fstab file:

   sudo nano /etc/fstab 
   

   Locate the line that contains the swap file information and delete it:

   /swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0

   1	/swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0

3. Save and close the fstab file.
4. Remove the swap file:

   sudo rm /swapfile 
   

Conclusion

In this article, we have discussed the steps to add swap space in Ubuntu 22.04. Increasing swap space is important to prevent performance issues on systems with limited RAM. By following the steps outlined in this article, you can easily add swap space to your system and improve its performance.