partitioning - I have a Linux swap partition but how do I set it up permanently?
2014-04
I have a laptop with 2GB RAM and not the funds to buy more RAM. Ever since I installed 64-BIT Mint (MATE desktop), I am using more than 1GB RAM compared to between 170 - 500MB when I was in 32-BIT Cinnamon.
I have created a swap partition and now I want to set it permanently so that it is activated upon startup/reboot. Can someone please help me with the commands to use in ROOT terminal for this?
Thanks!
PS: Below is a list of fdisk -l, showing drive partitions
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000814ae
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 718847 358400 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 718848 571549695 285415424 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 571549696 781264895 104857600 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4 781264896 976771071 97753088 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 781266944 966531071 92632064 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda6 966533120 976771071 5118976 82 Linux swap / Solaris
Disk /dev/sdb: 8100 MB, 8100249600 bytes
204 heads, 51 sectors/track, 1520 cylinders, total 15820800 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000d308d
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 2048 15820799 7909376 83 Linux
Here is my fstab file contents:
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to
# name devices that works even if disks are added and removed.
# See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> unt point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
/host/linuxmint/disks/root.disk / ext4 loop,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/host/linuxmint/disks/swap.disk none swap loop,sw 0 0
# a swapfile is not a swap partition, so no using swapon|off from here on
#use dphys-swapfile swap[on|off] for that
Start your favourite editor and open /etc/fstab
. Since this is a system wide configuration file you will either need to do this as root (or any other account with uid 0) or you need to start the editor with extra rights (sudo).
Find an empty line and add /dev/sda6 swap swap defaults 0 0
.
Save, then test with 'swapon -a`.
Explanation:
/etc/fstab contains information about which partitions to mounts and which filesystems those partitions are formatted with. Most of these will get automatically added when you boot. (Exception: noauto
option).
The swap partition is treated as any other partition, except that is has no mount point.
This is how a typical fstab file might look:
# file system mount-point type options dump fsck_order
#
/dev/sda1 / ext2 defaults 0 0
/dev/sda2 /usr ext2 defaults 0 1
/dev/sda3 /usr/local ext2 defaults 0 1
/dev/sda4 /home ext2 defaults, noatime 0 1
# Disk 2
#
/dev/sdb1 /tmp ext2 defaults, noatime 0 0
/dev/sdb2 swap swap defaults 0 0
After you made en entry in fstab you can test this by turning on all standard swap locations with the command swapon -a
.
I'm using two swap disks. Changing the order they are in in /etc/fstab and using "pri" in fstab doesn't have any effect.
This is what it looks like /etc/fstab
#swap on other disk
UUID=90a1550c-84d6-4bde-8bc1-7c15292980f1 none swap sw,pri=-1 0 0
#swap on same disk
UUID=13b70e65-f1c3-4728-920f-9e92467d1df0 none swap sw,pri=-2 0 0
This is the output of swapon -s
Filename Type Size Used Priority
/dev/sda1 partition 2562328 176 -1
/dev/sdb1 partition 2562328 0 -2
Its opposite of what it is in fstab, and changes to fstab have no effect.
Actually, the order doesn't affect priority. However, the pri
setting is what you need. Could you add some lines of /etc/fstab that don't work for you?