Using a swap file on PI 3

Support & Help Requests
#1

Hello,
I have installed Ubuntu Mate 15.10.3 on my new Pi 3. It works fine, i have done the resize procedure, now the /dev/root has gone from 95% usage to 23%, and the memory also seems to be in a lower usage.

But i see “swap not available”, so i would like to know how we could create and use the swap in order to improve usage ?

I don’t really know Linux, i am just able to copy/paste sudo commands in the terminal, so pleased be very specific or give me a link to a very detailed and simple procedure.

Regards

Bernard

#2

Hi, welcome!

The swap partition (known as a paging file in Windows) is where physical memory (RAM) is temporarily stored to disk., usually when the system is low on RAM. System performance temporarily drops when the system is “swapping”, and the system would lock up if it’s out of memory with no swap.

For the Raspberry Pi, by default, no swap is created as this would wear out the SD card and degrade performance even further. It’s not essential to have swap, but desired for a standard computer.

To swap or not to swap?
#3

Thanks, but in the meantime i found how to create one, i created a swap of 2 gb, and up to now it seams not so bad. I will see how it works then and may be suppressed it if perf issues…