Adjust swap memory size on Ubuntu

Intro

Today, when using CryoSPARC for Non-uniform Refinement, the task was terminated unexpectedly. After searching, it was determined that the process may have been killed by the system because of insufficient memory.

There are two ways to increase memory, one is to pay the money, and the other is to increase swap memory.

Because most tasks in the workflow do not have high memory requirements, and according to the task log, only a small amount of memory is needed to solve the problem, so plan to try to increase swap memory first.

Detailed procedure

All of the following are from ChatGPT4 and are proven to work, with some modifications to ensure readability.

1. Close the current swap file, open the terminal, and execute the following command:

sudo swapoff -a

2. You can do this with dd or fallocate command,fallocate is faster than dd, but not all file systems support it.

   1. An example of using fallocate to resize a swap file to 8GB:

      BASH

      sudo fallocate -l 8G /swapfile
      

   2. If your system does not support fallocate, you can use the dd command:

      BASH

      sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1G count=8 
      # `bs=1G` indicates that each time a 1GB is written，`count=8` indicates that 8GB total written。
      

3. Set permissions on swap files so that only root can read and write:

sudo chmod 600 /swapfile

4. Set the file to a swap file:

sudo mkswap /swapfile

5. Enable the new swap file:

sudo swapon /swapfile

6. Perpetuate swap settings

To retain the swap setting after the system restart, you need to add it to the /etc/fstab file. Open the /etc/fstab file and add the following lines:

/swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0

In this way, the swap file is automatically enabled each time the system boots.

Outro

After increasing the swap memory from 2G to 8G, the task was successfully completed. 800CNY saved, a good day.