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OK, here's what's going on.

I've got a RedHat 5 server with a swap partition (/dev/sda3) that's 3GB.

For some reason swap memory is still being taken up on / (/dev/sda2), and fills up the drive on occasion. Is there a way I can tell my system that if it needs to use HD space for swap, to use a different drive?

Devar-TTY
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  • Are you sure that _swap_ is filling up `/`, and not temporary files (or log files, or something else)? – mattdm Apr 07 '11 at 15:40

3 Answers3

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To find really what is using your space, use df to see the partition layout and disk usage, and du / -h --max-depth=1 to get an estimative of directory sizes and from that see what is happening.

Also, swapon -s will show exactly what swap devices are being used and how much of each one is occupied.

coredump
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  • I've done searches for large files, tmp files, and even moved some larger stuff off the partition to another one. Space keeps filling up. After a fresh reboot I get the space back, then it fills up again eventually. – Devar-TTY Apr 07 '11 at 15:15
  • @rkalajian That sounds like `/tmp` or some kind of logfile, not `swap`. Do you have `tmpfs` or `ramfs`? Add the output of your `df` to your question. – coredump Apr 07 '11 at 15:17
  • @coredump Logs are on a seperate partition, and /tmp is clean. 'df' shows: /dev/sda2,2972268,1933592,885256,69% / - /dev/sda,131581128,33872852,90916400,28%,r5 - /dev/sdb1,481711200,142404696,314442304,32%,/data2 - tmpfs,4155412,0,4155412,0%,/dev/shm – Devar-TTY Apr 07 '11 at 15:21
  • Yeah that output shows nothing really wrong. See if `free` is showing your swap enabled. – coredump Apr 07 '11 at 15:27
  • It does. It's pretty empty right now, with most of the 3GB free. – Devar-TTY Apr 07 '11 at 15:34
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    You can also use files; you don't have to use partitions, and you don't have to use something like `swapd` to do so. – mattdm Apr 07 '11 at 15:37
  • @mattdm hmm you're correct, it slipped my mind on the first answer. Fixed. – coredump Apr 07 '11 at 15:47
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Ignoring all the parts of your question that make no sense, you can use mkswap to format a device to use as swap, and you can use swapon to activate it. Add it to /etc/fstab if you want to make it permanent.

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
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  • I've already got a swap device, and no means to add a new device for additional swap space right now. I'm looking into creating a swap file on an additional partition, but I need to know it'll take precedence over filling up / when the actual swap drive overflows. – Devar-TTY Apr 07 '11 at 15:26
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    @rkalajian — look at `man swapon` for how to set the relative priority of your swap devices. (This can go in fstab, too.) – mattdm Apr 07 '11 at 15:39
  • @mattdm - That sounds like exactly what I need. – Devar-TTY Apr 07 '11 at 15:43
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You can simply follow the below steps to create a additional swap partition on Linux.

  • Just create a partition with fdisk command and change it's partition code for Linux swap partition e.g. 82.

  • now use command mkswap drive_name to create the swap signature, then use swapon drive name command to activate the swap partition.

For example, to create swap partition type:

mkswap /dev/sdb1

and to activate it 

swapon /dev/sdb1

Note : I have mentioned /dev/sdb1 for example purposes, you use the drive as per your scenario.

now mount the created swap partition on /etc/fstab file.

for testing you can use below commands :-

swapon -s shows swap usage summary by device

free -m Display amount of free and used memory in the system

bummi
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ELinuxbook
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