I have made a swapfile following How to add swap space on ubuntu 16.04. And I have 4GB swap memory available. But in my root directory I see 2 file with names swapfile
and swapspace
, both occupying 4.3GB of space. I don't understand why 2 files are there. I guess there should be a swapfile but what is this swapsapce then?
3 Answers
You have 2 files probably because you created 2 files.
You can have a swap partition(recommended) or a swap file, or a combination of swap partitions and swap files.
Here you can get some more info:
-
I have been through the links. And I didn't created 2 files, I just followed the instructions that were given in link i mentioned. Even if i check
sudo swapon -s
, I seeFilename: /swapfile Type: file Size:4194300 Used:52736 Priority:-1
. I don't see 2 swapfiles or swapportion. Also, how can I be sure which one should i delete and which I should keep. Oct 19, 2016 at 5:40 -
From your output above, you can delete the second file
swapspace
because this file is unused.– BennyOct 19, 2016 at 6:42
Do you have a program called swapspace
installed?
# dpkg -l swapspace
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Architecture Description
+++-========================-=================-=================-===============
ii swapspace 1.10-4ubuntu3 amd64 dynamic swap space manager
I see from the man page swapspace(1)
that the default location for a swap file made by swapspace
is /var/lib/swapspace
, but the -s
option lets you put it anywhere.
As long as swapon -s
only shows that /swapfile
is in use then the file /swapspace
is not.
And if you have swapspace
installed, and don't intend to use it, it should be safe to remove it with apt-get remove
:
# apt-get remove swapspace
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED
swapspace
0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 1 to remove and 5 not to upgrade.
After this operation, 122 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
(Reading database ... 139800 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing swapspace (1.10-4ubuntu3) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.5-1) ...
-
I just deleted the swapspace file manually, I changed it's permissions and used
rm -rf swapspace
. Hopefully,I did't removed it in wrong way. After restarting my memory was free by 4Gb. ANd now if I checkdpkg -l swapspace
, I see :dpkg-query: no packages found matching swapspace
Oct 19, 2016 at 6:44
Try running swapon -s
as root. This will show you what swap is being used, and whether its a partition on a disk or a swapfile on a filesystem.
A 4GB swap partition as primary, and a 1GB swap file in /mythtv1/
as last resort.
backend:~# swapon -s
Filename Type Size Used Priority
/dev/dm-4 partition 4194300 178756 -1
/myth1/swapfile file 1048572 512 -2
You can have multiple swapfiles and swap partitions, with equal or different priorities. That is, you may choose to swap to two swap files, one on each of two fast hard drives, and have a third swap file with a lower priority as a backstop on a slower drive.
Effectively swapfiles and swap partitions function the same, its a matter of convenience which you choose.
Swapfiles don't need backing up, but they should have permissions to stop anyone but root reading it.