How to resize already existing swap file

Have you ever make mistake with size of your swap file during linux installation ? Good news is that size can be resized.

This article is written after successful usage of tutorial mentioned here : https://askubuntu.com/questions/178712/how-to-increase-swap-space

First at all you can check where your swap file is located.

cat /proc/swaps

In first column you can find path to your swap file. So let’s go …

  1. Turn off your swap

    sudo swapoff -a


  2. Create an empty swapfile ( next command will create 8G swap file

    sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1G count=8


  3. If your swap file was already created, you probably have correct permissions on file. But to be sure adjust permissions

    sudo chmod 0600 /swapfile


  4. Set up a Linux swap area

    sudo mkswap /swapfile


  5. Turn the swap on

    sudo swapon /swapfile



And that should be it. Check your swap size with command

free

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