mkswap
Syntax
mkswap [options]
device_or_file numblocks
Options
-c
checks the device for bad blocks before creating the swap space.
-f
forces creation of swap space even if there are errors, such as the requested size being greater than space available on the device.
-P
NNN
uses NNN
as the page size for the swap space.
-v
N
(where N
is 0 or 1) creates an old-style swap space if N
is 0; if N
is 1, creates a new-style swap space.
Description
The mkswap
command creates a swap space for use by the Linux kernel. If you are creating swap space in a disk partition, specify the partition's device name (such as /dev/hda2
) as the second argument to mkswap
. If you want to use a file as swap space, create the file with a command such as dd if=/dev/zero of=swapfile bs=1024 count=16384
. Then, type mkswap swapfile 16384 to create the swap space. You have to use the swapon command to activate a swap space.