Swap file creation success/failure?

Question

I just installed Linux for the first time (after 5 tries). I was trying to follow directions on creating a swap file from this website:

http://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/8208-all-about-linux-swap-space

It was my first time using the console, and I don't know if I succeeded or not. Is there some way to tell if it worked? Here is what I typed:

To run a command as administrator (user "root"), use "sudo <command>".
See "man sudo_root" for details.

paul@knight:~/Desktop$ dd if=/dev/zero of =/swapfile bs=1024 count=1048576
dd: unrecognized operand `of'
Try `dd --help' for more information.
paul@knight:~/Desktop$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1024 count=1048576
dd: opening `/swapfile': Permission denied
paul@knight:~/Desktop$ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1024 count=1048576
[sudo] password for paul: 
1048576+0 records in
1048576+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 49.6973 s, 21.6 MB/s
paul@knight:~/Desktop$ sudo mkswap /swapfile
mkswap: /swapfile: warning: don't erase bootbits sectors
        on whole disk. Use -f to force.
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 1048572 KiB
no label, UUID=5e900a84-03ca-4a00-ad60-df4784abc7ef
paul@knight:~/Desktop$ sudo swapon /swapfile
paul@knight:~/Desktop$ etc/fstab
bash: etc/fstab: No such file or directory
paul@knight:~/Desktop$ /etc/fstab/swapfile
bash: /etc/fstab/swapfile: Not a directory
paul@knight:~/Desktop$ /etc/fstab swapfile
bash: /etc/fstab: Permission denied
paul@knight:~/Desktop$ sudo /etc/fstab swapfile
sudo: /etc/fstab: command not found
paul@knight:~/Desktop$ /swapfile
bash: /swapfile: Permission denied
paul@knight:~/Desktop$ sudo /swapfile
sudo: /swapfile: command not found
paul@knight:~/Desktop$ 

I'm totally new at this. Also, my physical memory is 256 Mb and my swap space is about twice that (I think). My partition for Linux (Xubuntu 11.04) is 50 Gb.

Do I have a 1 Gb swap file now? Or just a hole in my hard drive?

Is a swap file as good as the swap space?

Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

Is swapfile has nearly the same performance as a swap-partition. You can check it by simply issuing

free -m

it should look something like this:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          1754       1645        109          0         42        227
-/+ buffers/cache:       1375        379
Swap:         1023        245        778

since sudo swapon didn't throw an error it should have been successful. Now you can make this permanent by editing fstab: sudo nano /etc/fstab. On the last line add: /swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0 with /swapfile [TAB]swap[TAB] etc... (so no spaces).

You can read more at the Ubuntu Wiki swap FAQ