Swap space is an area set aside for use in the event that physical RAM becomes full. On a Linux machine, when the system runs out of RAM inactive pages are moved to the Swap Space freeing up RAM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whilst building a Yocto Image on an old machine with limited RAM I was getting repeated failures during the compilation of qtbase. Analysis of the kernel log revealed that there was a shortage of memory, and hence a need to increase the swap space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You can determine the current status of the swap space using the following command<\/p>\n\n\n\n
$ sudo swapon --show\nNAME TYPE SIZE USED PRIO\n\/swapfile file 2G 265.9M -2<\/pre>\n\n\n\nTo increase the size of the swapfile, begin by disabling the swap space, and then remove the existing swapfile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
sudo swapoff \/swapfile
sudo rm \/swapfile<\/pre>\n\n\n\nYou can now create a new blank swapfile, set the permissions associated with it, and then re-enable the swap space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
sudo dd if=\/dev\/zero of=\/swapfile bs=1M count=8192\nsudo chmod 600 \/swapfile\nsudo mkswap \/swapfile\nsudo swapon \/swapfile<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Swap space is an area set aside for use in the event that physical RAM becomes full. On a Linux machine, when the system runs out of RAM inactive pages are moved to the Swap Space freeing up RAM. Whilst building a Yocto Image on an old machine with limited RAM I was getting repeated … <\/p>\n