Increasing Swap Space

Solaris 10

• Create a swapfile in a desired location. The following command will create a 8 gigabyte file in the root directory called swapfile:

# mkfile 8g /swapfile

• Edit your /etc/vfstab so that it will mount the swapfile the next time the machine reboots. The vfstab entry should look like this:

#device         device          mount           FS      fsck    mount   mount
#to mount       to fsck         point           type    pass    at boot options
#
/swapfile       -               -               swap    -       no      -

• You can add the /swapfile to your swap without rebooting using the following command:

# swap -a /swapfile

Red Hat

• Create swapfile. If the blocksize (bs) is 1024 bytes, and we are creating an 8 gigabyte swapfile, the count should be:
  

# cd /
# dd if=/dev/zero of=swapfile bs=1024 count=8388608

• Add the swapfile to your swap.

# swapon -s
# mkswap /swapfile 8388608
# swapon -s

• Edit your /etc/fstab file to mount your swapfile upon boot.

# vi /etc/fstab
/swapfile         swap           swap          defaults       0        0

-- JesseSuen - 02 Mar 2006