Thursday, April 6, 2017

Adding Swap Space - RHEL/CentOS

You have two options: add a swap partition or add a swap file. It is recommended that you add a swap partition, but that can be difficult if you do not have any free space available.

 Adding Swap Partition: 

To add a swap partition (assuming /dev/hdb2 is the swap partition you want to add):
  1. The hard drive can not be in use (partitions can not be mounted, and swap space can not be enabled). The partition table should not be modified while in use because the kernel may not properly recognize the changes. Data could be overwitten by writing to the wrong partition because the partition table and partitions mounted do not match. The easiest way to achieve this is to boot your system in rescue mode. Refer to Chapter 11 Basic System Recovery for instructions on booting into rescue mode. When prompted to mount the file system, select Skip.
    Alternately, if the drive does not contain any partitions in use, you can unmount them and turn off all the swap space on the hard drive with the swapoff command.
  2. Create the swap partition using parted:
    • At a shell prompt as root, type the command parted /dev/hdb, where /dev/hdb is the device name for the hard drive with free space.
    • At the (parted) prompt, type print to view the existing partitions and the amount of free space. The start and end values are in megabytes. Determine how much free space is on the hard drive and how much you want to allocate for a new swap partition.
    • At the (parted) prompt, type mkpartfs part-type linux-swap start end, where part-type is one of primary, extended, or logical, start is the starting point of the partition, and end is the end point of the partition.
      WarningWarning
      Changes take place immediately; be careful when you type.
    • Exit parted by typing quit.
  3. Now that you have created the swap partition, use the command mkswap to setup the swap partition. At a shell prompt as root, type the following:
    mkswap /dev/hdb2
  4. To enable the swap partition immediately, type the following command:
    swapon /dev/hdb2
  5. To enable it at boot time, edit /etc/fstab to include:
    /dev/hdb2               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
    The next time the system boots, it enables the new swap partition.
  6. After adding the new swap partition and enabling it, verify it is enabled by viewing the output of the command cat /proc/swaps or free.
Adding SWAP File: 
To add a swap file:
  1. Determine the size of the new swap file in megabytes and multiple by 1024 to determine the block size. For example, the block size of a 64 MB swap file is 65536.
  2. At a shell prompt as root, type the following command with count being equal to the desired block size:
    dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1024 count=65536
  3. Setup the swap file with the command:
    mkswap /swapfile
  4. To enable the swap file immediately but not automatically at boot time:
    swapon /swapfile
  5. To enable it at boot time, edit /etc/fstab to include:
    /swapfile               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
    The next time the system boots, it enables the new swap file.
  6. After adding the new swap file and enabling it, verify it is enabled by viewing the output of the command cat /proc/swaps or free.
Another Way

Procedure To Add a Swap File Under Linux

You need to use the dd command to create swap file. The mkswap command is used to set up a Linux swap area on a device or in a file.

Step #1: Login as the Root User

Open a terminal window (select Applications > Accessories > Terminal) or login to remote server using the ssh client. Switch to the root user by typing su - (or sudo -s) and entering the root password, when prompted:
$ su -
OR
$ sudo -s

Step #2: Create Storage File

Type the following command to create 512MB swap file (1024 * 512MB = 524288 block size):
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile1 bs=1024 count=524288
Sample outputs:
524288+0 records in
524288+0 records out
536870912 bytes (537 MB) copied, 3.23347 s, 166 MB/s
Where,
  1. if=/dev/zero : Read from /dev/zero file. /dev/zero is a special file in that provides as many null characters to build storage file called /swapfile1.
  2. of=/swapfile1 : Read from /dev/zero write storage file to /swapfile1.
  3. bs=1024 : Read and write 1024 BYTES bytes at a time.
  4. count=524288 : Copy only 523288 BLOCKS input blocks.

Step #3: Secure swap file

Setup correct file permission for security reasons, enter:
# chown root:root /swapfile1
# chmod 0600 /swapfile1
A world-readable swap file is a huge local vulnerability. The above commands make sure only root user can read and write to the file.

Step #4: Set up a Linux swap area

Type the following command to set up a Linux swap area in a file:
# mkswap /swapfile1
Sample outputs:
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 524284 KiB
no label, UUID=0e5e7c60-bbba-4089-a76c-2bb29c0f0839

Step #5: Enabling the swap file

Finally, activate /swapfile1 swap space immediately, enter:
# swapon /swapfile1

Step #6: Update /etc/fstab file

To activate /swapfile1 after Linux system reboot, add entry to /etc/fstab file. Open this file using a text editor such as vi:
# vi /etc/fstab
Append the following line:
/swapfile1 none swap sw 0 0
Save and close the file. Next time Linux comes up after reboot, it enables the new swap file for you automatically.

How do I verify swap is activated or not?

Simply use the free command:
$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          1876       1798         77          0        119       1440
-/+ buffers/cache:        237       1638
Swap:         4607          0       4607

How can I display swap usage summary on Linux?

Type the following swapon command:
# swapon -s
Sample outputs:
Filename    Type  Size Used Priority
/dev/sda6                               partition 4194296 0 0
/swapfile1                              file  524280 0 -1
Another option is to view /proc/meminfo file:
$ less /proc/meminfo
$ grep -i --color swap /proc/meminfo
Sample outputs:
SwapCached:        30748 kB
SwapTotal:       6291448 kB
SwapFree:        6154008 kB
You can also use top command, atop command, and/or htop command to display information about swap usage:
# top
# atop
# htop
Sample outputs from a database server running on a CentOS Linux server:
  1  [||                        3.9%]     Tasks: 171, 106 thr; 1 running
  2  [                          0.0%]     Load average: 0.06 0.12 0.09 
  3  [||                        2.0%]     Uptime: 22 days, 07:07:28
  4  [                          0.0%]
  5  [                          0.0%]
  6  [                          0.0%]
  7  [                          0.0%]
  8  [                          0.0%]
  Mem[||||||||||||||||||2112/11909MB]
  Swp[|                   134/6143MB]

  PID USER      PRI  NI  VIRT   RES   SHR S CPU% MEM%   TIME+  Command
 8523 mysql      20   0 4545M  414M  4816 S  0.0  3.5  0:00.00 /usr/libexec/mysq
 8524 mysql      20   0 4545M  414M  4816 S  0.0  3.5  0:02.74 /usr/libexec/mysq
 8525 mysql      20   0 4545M  414M  4816 S  0.0  3.5  0:16.17 /usr/libexec/mysq
 8526 mysql      20   0 4545M  414M  4816 S  0.0  3.5  0:06.33 /usr/libexec/mysq
 8528 mysql      20   0 4545M  414M  4816 S  0.0  3.5  4:02.14 /usr/libexec/mysq
 8529 mysql      20   0 4545M  414M  4816 S  0.0  3.5  5:22.00 /usr/libexec/mysq
 8530 mysql      20   0 4545M  414M  4816 S  0.0  3.5  0:04.63 /usr/libexec/mysq
 8531 mysql      20   0 4545M  414M  4816 S  0.0  3.5  0:50.95 /usr/libexec/mysq
 8532 mysql      20   0 4545M  414M  4816 S  0.0  3.5  0:08.10 /usr/libexec/mysq
 9359 mysql      20   0 4545M  414M  4816 S  0.0  3.5 22:53.28 /usr/libexec/mysq

How can I disable devices and files for paging and swapping on Linux?

You need to use the swapoff command:
# swapoff /swapfile1
# swapon -s

How do I set swappiness on a Linux server?

The syntax is:
# sysctl vm.swappiness=VALUE
# sysctl vm.swappiness=20
OR
# echo VALUE > /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
# echo 30 > /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
The value in /proc/sys/vm/swappiness file controls how aggressively the kernel will swap memory pages. Higher values increase agressiveness, lower values descrease aggressiveness. The default value is 60. To make changes permanent add the following line to /etc/sysctl.conf:

echo 'vm.swappiness=30' >> /etc/sysctl.conf
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