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I did not provide swap space while installing Ubuntu. How shall i give the swap space now? I've a multibooted system with win xp and ubuntu. please help

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  • Can you add the output of swapon -s, and df.
    – Mitch
    Jun 30, 2013 at 6:06
  • @Mitch output of swapon -s: 'k@Vostro:~$ swapon -s Filename Type Size Used Priority' output of df: 'Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda5 20634772 4021872 15564708 21% / udev 500452 4 500448 1% /dev tmpfs 203276 884 202392 1% /run none 5120 0 5120 0% /run/lock none 508184 152 508032 1% /run/shm none 102400 32 102368 1% /run/user'
    – Kattybilly
    Jun 30, 2013 at 6:29

2 Answers 2

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This will create a swap file of 512MB, using space from /dev/sda5 since you're only using up about 8% of it.

Just press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open Terminal. When it opens, run the command(s) below:

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1024 count=512k sudo mkswap /swapfile

Finish up by activating the swap file:

sudo swapon /swapfile

To make the swap permanent add it to the fstab file.

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

Paste in the following line:

 /swapfile       none    swap    sw      0       0

And finally set up the correct permissions on the swap file:

sudo chown root:root /swapfile 
sudo chmod 0600 /swapfile

Source:DigitalOcean

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  • will it affect any data on sda5 which i already have in it and will be safely able to access that data in windows OS too ? because i saw many suggestions to first make partition first using GParted.
    – Kattybilly
    Jun 30, 2013 at 6:33
  • @Kattybilly Yes! Better to use GParted. Thus, with a little attention you can see exactly what you do.
    – Radu Rădeanu
    Jun 30, 2013 at 6:37
  • It won't, since this will create a swap file. But its best to create a swap partition instead of a swap file.
    – Mitch
    Jun 30, 2013 at 6:39
  • @Mitch so how to go forward after creating a swap partition using GParted ?
    – Kattybilly
    Jun 30, 2013 at 6:45
  • Make sure that you do that from Live CD, since the partition has to be un-mounted. But once you finish all the needed steps, all you have to do is reboot. By the way how much RAM do you have in your machine?
    – Mitch
    Jun 30, 2013 at 6:53
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First you must to free up some space and make a swap partition using a program like GParted.

After you made a new swap partition, follow this answer: https://askubuntu.com/a/33700/147044.

To calculate the size of swap partition, use this answer: https://askubuntu.com/a/49138/147044.

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  • how much space shall i set aside for swap partition?
    – Kattybilly
    Jun 30, 2013 at 6:19
  • @Kattybilly I edited my answer.
    – Radu Rădeanu
    Jun 30, 2013 at 6:23

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