.\"
.\" @(#)swapon.8 6.3 (Berkeley) 3/16/91
.\"
-.\" Sun Dec 27 12:31:30 1992: Modified by faith@cs.unc.edu
-.\" Sat Mar 6 20:46:02 1993: Modified by faith@cs.unc.edu
-.\" Sat Oct 9 09:35:30 1993: Converted to man format by faith@cs.unc.edu
-.\" Sat Nov 27 20:22:42 1993: Updated authorship information, faith@cs.unc.edu
-.\" Mon Sep 25 14:12:38 1995: Added -v and -p information
-.\" Tue Apr 30 03:32:07 1996: Added some text from A. Koppenhoefer
-.\"
-.TH SWAPON 8 "September 1995" "util-linux" "System Administration"
+.TH SWAPON 8 "October 2014" "util-linux" "System Administration"
.SH NAME
swapon, swapoff \- enable/disable devices and files for paging and swapping
.SH SYNOPSIS
-Get info:
-.br
-.in +5
-.B swapon \-s
-.RB [ \-h ]
-.RB [ \-V ]
-.sp
-.in -5
-Enable/disable:
-.br
-.in +5
.B swapon
-.RB [ \-d ]
-.RB [ \-f ]
-.RB [ \-p
-.IR priority ]
-.RB [ \-v ]
-.IR specialfile ...
+[options]
+.RI [ specialfile ...]
.br
.B swapoff
-.RB [ \-v ]
-.IR specialfile ...
-.sp
-.in -5
-Enable/disable all:
-.br
-.in +5
-.B swapon \-a
-.RB [ \-e ]
-.RB [ \-f ]
-.RB [ \-v ]
-.br
-.B swapoff \-a
-.RB [ \-v ]
-.in -5
+.RB [ \-va ]
+.RI [ specialfile ...]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B swapon
is used to specify devices on which paging and swapping are to take place.
The device or file used is given by the
.I specialfile
-parameter. It may be of the form
+parameter. It may be of the form
.BI \-L " label"
or
.BI \-U " uuid"
or
.IR /etc/fstab ).
+.SH OPTIONS
.TP
-.B "\-a, \-\-all"
+.BR \-a , " \-\-all"
All devices marked as ``swap'' in
.I /etc/fstab
are made available, except for those with the ``noauto'' option.
Devices that are already being used as swap are silently skipped.
.TP
-.B "\-d, \-\-discard"
-Discard freed swap pages before they are reused, if the swap
-device supports the discard or trim operation. This may improve
-performance on some Solid State Devices, but often it does not.
+.BR \-d , " \-\-discard" [ =\fIpolicy\fR]
+Enable swap discards, if the swap backing device supports the discard or
+trim operation. This may improve performance on some Solid State Devices,
+but often it does not. The option allows one to select between two
+available swap discard policies:
+.B \-\-discard=once
+to perform a single-time discard operation for the whole swap area at swapon;
+or
+.B \-\-discard=pages
+to asynchronously discard freed swap pages before they are available for reuse.
+If no policy is selected, the default behavior is to enable both discard types.
The
.I /etc/fstab
-mount option
-.BI discard
-may be also used to enable discard flag.
+mount options
+.BR discard ,
+.BR discard=once ,
+or
+.B discard=pages
+may also be used to enable discard flags.
.TP
-.B "\-e, \-\-ifexists"
+.BR \-e , " \-\-ifexists"
Silently skip devices that do not exist.
The
.I /etc/fstab
mount option
-.BI nofail
-may be also used to skip non-existing device.
+.B nofail
+may also be used to skip non-existing device.
.TP
-.B "\-f, \-\-fixpgsz"
-Reinitialize (exec /sbin/mkswap) the swap space if its page size does not
-match that of the the current running kernel.
-.B mkswap(2)
+.BR \-f , " \-\-fixpgsz"
+Reinitialize (exec mkswap) the swap space if its page size does not
+match that of the current running kernel.
+.BR mkswap (8)
initializes the whole device and does not check for bad blocks.
.TP
-.B \-h, \-\-help
-Provide help.
+.BR \-h , " \-\-help"
+Display help text and exit.
.TP
-.B "\-L \fIlabel\fP"
+.BI \-L " label"
Use the partition that has the specified
.IR label .
(For this, access to
.I /proc/partitions
is needed.)
.TP
-.B "\-p, \-\-priority \fIpriority\fP"
+.BR \-o , " \-\-options " \fIopts\fP
+Specify swap options by an fstab-compatible comma-separated string.
+For example:
+.RS
+.RS
+.sp
+.B "swapon \-o pri=1,discard=pages,nofail /dev/sda2"
+.sp
+.RE
+The \fIopts\fP string is evaluated last and overrides all other
+command line options.
+.RE
+.TP
+.BR \-p , " \-\-priority " \fIpriority\fP
Specify the priority of the swap device.
.I priority
-is a value between 0 and 32767. Higher numbers indicate higher
-priority. See
+is a value between \-1 and 32767. Higher numbers indicate
+higher priority. See
.BR swapon (2)
-for a full description of swap priorities. Add
+for a full description of swap priorities. Add
.BI pri= value
to the option field of
.I /etc/fstab
for use with
-.BR "swapon -a" .
+.BR "swapon \-a" .
+When no priority is defined, it defaults to \-1.
.TP
-.B "\-s, \-\-summary"
-Display swap usage summary by device. Equivalent to "cat /proc/swaps".
-Not available before Linux 2.1.25.
+.BR \-s , " \-\-summary"
+Display swap usage summary by device. Equivalent to "cat /proc/swaps".
+This output format is DEPRECATED in favour
+of \fB\-\-show\fR that provides better control on output data.
.TP
-\fB\-\-show\fR [\fIcolumn,column\fR]
-Display definable device table similar to
-.B \-\-summary
-output. See \-\-help output for
-.I column
-list.
+.BR \-\-show [ =\fIcolumn\fR ...]
+Display a definable table of swap areas. See the
+.B \-\-help
+output for a list of available columns.
+.TP
+.B \-\-output\-all
+Output all available columns.
.TP
.B \-\-noheadings
Do not print headings when displaying
.B \-\-show
output without aligning table columns.
.TP
-.B \-\-inhuman
+.B \-\-bytes
Display swap size in bytes in
.B \-\-show
-output instead of user friendly size and unit.
-.B "\-U \fIuuid\fP"
+output instead of in user-friendly units.
+.TP
+.BI \-U " uuid"
Use the partition that has the specified
.IR uuid .
.TP
-.B "\-v, \-\-verbose"
+.BR \-v , " \-\-verbose"
Be verbose.
.TP
-.B "\-V, \-\-version"
-Display version.
-.SH NOTES
-You should not use
-.B swapon
-on a file with holes.
-Swap over NFS may not work.
-.PP
-.B swapon
-automatically detects and rewrites swap space signature with old software
-suspend data (e.g S1SUSPEND, S2SUSPEND, ...). The problem is that if we don't
-do it, then we get data corruption the next time an attempt at unsuspending is
-made.
-.PP
-.B swapon
-may not work correctly when using a swap file with some versions of btrfs.
-This is due to the swap file implementation in the kernel expecting to be able
-to write to the file directly, without the assistance of the file system.
-Since btrfs is a copy-on-write file system, the file location may not be
-static and corruption can result. Btrfs actively disallows the use of files
-on its file systems by refusing to map the file. This can be seen in the system
-log as "swapon: swapfile has holes." One possible workaround is to map the
-file to a loopback device. This will allow the file system to determine the
-mapping properly but may come with a performance impact.
+.BR \-V , " \-\-version"
+Display version information and exit.
+.SH ENVIRONMENT
+.IP LIBMOUNT_DEBUG=all
+enables libmount debug output.
+.IP LIBBLKID_DEBUG=all
+enables libblkid debug output.
-.SH SEE ALSO
-.BR swapon (2),
-.BR swapoff (2),
-.BR fstab (5),
-.BR init (8),
-.BR mkswap (8),
-.BR rc (8),
-.BR mount (8)
.SH FILES
.br
.I /dev/sd??
.br
.I /etc/fstab
ascii filesystem description table
+.SH NOTES
+.SS Files with holes
+The swap file implementation in the kernel expects to be able to write to the
+file directly, without the assistance of the filesystem. This is a problem on
+files with holes or on copy-on-write files on filesystems like Btrfs.
+.sp
+Commands like
+.BR cp (1)
+or
+.BR truncate (1)
+create files with holes. These files will be rejected by swapon.
+.sp
+Preallocated files created by
+.BR fallocate (1)
+may be interpreted as files with holes too depending of the filesystem.
+Preallocated swap files are supported on XFS since Linux 4.18.
+.sp
+The most portable solution to create a swap file is to use
+.BR dd (1)
+and /dev/zero.
+.SS Btrfs
+Swap files on Btrfs are supported since Linux 5.0 on files with nocow attribute.
+See the
+.BR btrfs (5)
+manual page for more details.
+.SS NFS
+Swap over \fBNFS\fR may not work.
+.SS Suspend
+.B swapon
+automatically detects and rewrites a swap space signature with old software
+suspend data (e.g., S1SUSPEND, S2SUSPEND, ...). The problem is that if we don't
+do it, then we get data corruption the next time an attempt at unsuspending is
+made.
.SH HISTORY
The
.B swapon
command appeared in 4.0BSD.
+.SH SEE ALSO
+.BR swapoff (2),
+.BR swapon (2),
+.BR fstab (5),
+.BR init (8),
+.BR fallocate (1),
+.BR mkswap (8),
+.BR mount (8),
+.BR rc (8)
.SH AVAILABILITY
The swapon command is part of the util-linux package and is available from
-ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.
+https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.
projects / thirdparty / util-linux.git / blobdiff