Question

How do I reduce SWAP space in Ubuntu?

Asked by: srikanthrad

When installing Ubuntu 9.0.4, I didn't knew or wasn't thinking about allocating swap space and with too much exuberance I created about 9.7 GB of swap space. Now, please tell me how much do I need and how to adjust the swap space ? Please suggest.

Cpu(s):  7.7%us,  1.3%sy,  0.0%ni, 90.7%id,  0.0%wa,  0.3%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   3725852k total,  3674224k used,    51628k free,  1020260k buffers
Swap:  9759448k total,       12k used,  9759436k free,  1628348k cached

                                  
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Asked On
2009-10-28 at 20:44:01ID24853520
Tags

Ubuntu

,

Linux setup

Topics

Ubuntu

,

Linux Setup

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
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Answers

 

by: pramodbugudaiPosted on 2009-10-28 at 21:08:12ID: 25690582

Hi. The swap partition should be roughly the size of either your RAM or double your RAM

 This is the maximum that linux will actually use, though giving more will not harm you.

 

by: natokaPosted on 2009-10-29 at 03:27:22ID: 25692079

Ubuntu normally follows the rule of thumb to create the swap space (which pramdobugudai already has given) 1-2 times the size of ram.

Todays computers normally have got plenty of RAM and normally do not swap. Though I would not recommend to turn of swap completely, it is normally feasible on a normal desktop system to reduce the amount of swap to something around 2GB. This holds true as long as you don't run very memory consuming applications (like gimp or some other graphic tools for example).

Reducing swap after the installation is normally a very arduous work including the resizing of the swap partition. I would not recommend doing so for a linux newbie, as long as actual disk space is not of concern. (so to say that you have enough diskspace and are not likely to need the additional 5-7GB)

 

by: srikanthradPosted on 2009-10-29 at 12:44:09ID: 25697475

Can you suggest using parted? I have read told that it is simple with parted. Is it?  I also did not create /boot partition. Does it hurt?

 

by: srikanthradPosted on 2009-10-29 at 13:29:08ID: 25697910

At the end of this page "http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/manual/html_chapter/parted_2.html"
there is something about resize partition using parted. Can I use this?

 

by: natokaPosted on 2009-10-30 at 03:26:31ID: 25701569

no, /boot is not necessary on mondern computers (there have been limits on older hardware where the kernel had to be located in first few GigaBytes of the harddisk)

Well the problem what you're facing is nontrivial to begin with. First you would have to offline swap (easy)

Second you would need to shrink the partition (easy) and then reformat it (easy).

Now you need to either create a new partition (if this is still possible) in order to access the additional space (easy), or you want to attach it to a neighbouring partition (difficult) which will involve either copying data/growing the file system.

So now the approach to choose depends on several factors, to help you choose a good one, provide your partition table. execute:
fdisk -l

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