How do I install zRam?

Question

How can I install zRam on my Ubuntu 11.10 acer inspire netbook? Seems like it would be advantageous to use zRam. And would it work?

Answer 1

To install Zram for Ubuntu 11.04 and 11.10:

Open terminal and type in:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:shnatsel/zram

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install zramswap-enabler

from: http://www.webupd8.org/2011/10/increased-performance-in-linux-with.html

Answer 2

zram is built into the Linux kernel. I've been experimenting with zram and have a brief script to set it up for swapping, like this:

modprobe zram num_devices=2
echo "268435456" > /sys/block/zram0/disksize 
echo "268435456" > /sys/block/zram1/disksize 
mkswap /dev/zram0
mkswap /dev/zram1
swapon -p 1000 /dev/zram0
swapon -p 1000 /dev/zram1

The machine I was testing on had 1GB of RAM, so I decided to use 256MB*2 for zram swapping. You can also use a similar technique to set up zram as an ext3 filesystem.

You can check zram usage by cat'ing /sys/block/zram0/orig_data_size and mem_used_total