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* Description: Knowledge of Linux memory swap space
* Date: 02:22 PM EST, 06/19/2017
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<1> Linux Swap Space:
     |
     |__ o. Linux divides its physical RAM (random access memory) into chucks of memory called pages. 
     |      Swapping is the process whereby a page of memory is copied to the preconfigured space on the hard disk, called swap space, to free up that page of memory. 
     |      The combined sizes of the physical memory and the swap space is the amount of virtual memory available.
     |
     |__ o. Swapping is necessary for two important reasons. First, when the system requires more memory than is physically available, the kernel swaps out less used pages 
     |      and gives memory to the current application (process) that needs the memory immediately. Second, a significant number of the pages used by an application during 
     |      its startup phase may only be used for initialization and then never used again. The system can swap out those pages and free the memory for other applications 
     |      or even for the disk cache.
     |
     |__ o. However, swapping does have a downside. Compared to memory, disks are very slow. Memory speeds can be measured in nanoseconds, while disks are measured in milliseconds, 
     |      so accessing the disk can be tens of thousands times slower than accessing physical memory. The more swapping that occurs, the slower your system will be. 
     |      Sometimes excessive swapping or thrashing occurs where a page is swapped out and then very soon swapped in and then swapped out again and so on. 
     |      In such situations the system is struggling to find free memory and keep applications running at the same time. In this case only adding more RAM will help.
     |
     |__ o. Linux has two forms of swap space: the swap partition and the swap file. The swap partition is an independent section of the hard disk used solely for swapping; 
            no other files can reside there. The swap file is a special file in the filesystem that resides amongst your system and data files.
	
	
	
<2> Checking swap size:
     |
     |__ $ swapon -s
	 
             Filename                      Type             Size             Used         Priority
             /dev/dm-1                     partition        14434300         48116        -1         ......... Swap space on disk. Used unit is KB.
             /mnt/resource/swapfile        file             2097148          0            -1         ......... Swap space on file. Used unit is KB.


<3> Creating swap file:
     |
     |__ $ su - ............................................................................................... All the below actions should be performed as root.
     |
     |
     |__ $ dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/resource/swapfile_1 bs=1024 count=5242880 .................................. To create a swap file.
     |                                                                                                          Read operations from /dev/zero return as many null characters (0x00) 
     |             5242880+0 records in                                                                         as requested in the read operation.
     |             5242880+0 records out
     |             5368709120 bytes (5.4 GB) copied, 82.384 s, 65.2 MB/s
     |
     |
     |__ $ mkswap /mnt/resource/swapfile_1 .................................................................... Mark this file as a swap file.
     |
     |             mkswap: /swapfile: warning: don't erase bootbits sectors on whole disk. Use -f to force.
     |             Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 5242876 KiB
     |             no label, UUID=1b473708-e071-4a69-ab31-1334dd987c4d
     |
     |
     |__ $ swapon /mnt/resource/swapfile_1 .................................................................... Mount it on the file system, and make it alive immediately.
     |
     |
     |__ $ swapon -s .......................................................................................... Verify if swap file got created.
     |
     |             Filename                        Type          Size           Used      Priority
     |             /mnt/resource/swapfile          file          2097148        0         -1
     |             /mnt/resource/swapfile_1        file          5242876        0         -2
     |
     |
     |__ $ vi /etc/fstab ...................................................................................... Update FS table with newly added swap file.

                   /mnt/resource/swapfile_1               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
		
			
			
<4> Creating swap partition: 
     |
     |__ $ sudo su - 
     |   
     |__ $ fdisk -l
     |   
     |__ $ mkswap /dev/hdb1
     |   
     |__ $ swapon /dev/hdb1
     |   
     |__ $ swapon -s
     |
     |__ $ vi /etc/fstab			   

	 

<5> Reference:
     |
     |__ Author: Gary Sims, Subject: All about Linux swap space, Source - https://www.linux.com/news/all-about-linux-swap-space

	
	

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