swap-file-creator

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Swapfile21312345.png

Adds encrypted swap file to the system.

Introduction[edit]

swap-file-creator adds an encrypted swap file to the system. On every boot, it creates a new encrypted swapfile with a random password.

This is useful for systems with low RAM such as those inside virtual machines. Prevents common cases of freezing of VMs with low RAM during upgrades. [1]

It has an ENOUGH_RAM setting which defaults to 1950 MB. If there is more than enough RAM, no swap file will be created.

An optional option exists to shred the swapfile on shutdown but this is slow. [2]

For further information, see: https://github.com/Kicksecure/swap-file-creatorarchive.org

Installation[edit]

Install swap-file-creator. To accomplish that, the following steps A. to D. need to be done.

A. Update the package lists.

sudo apt update

B. Upgrade the system.

sudo apt full-upgrade

C. Install the swap-file-creator package.

Using apt command line parameter --no-install-recommends is in most cases optional.

sudo apt install --no-install-recommends swap-file-creator

D. Done.

The procedure of installing swap-file-creator is complete.

Functionality Test[edit]

To check it is working correctly, check the amount of free and used memory in the system.

free -m

Next, enable swapping and display the swap usage summary.

sudo swapon -s

For troubleshooting purposes, Check Daemon Log and search for unit-name: swap-file-creator.

Live Mode[edit]

swap-file-creator does not run if live mode is detected. [3]

Debugging[edit]

Only required in case of issues. Otherwise the user can skip this wiki chapter.

Error States[edit]

In case swap-file-creator is failing at boot time, it does not break the boot process.

For example, host kernel versions other than the one recommended on the recommended VirtualBox version wiki page are are likely to break VirtualBox VMs in many ways if these are unsupported by VirtualBox. [4] In this case, swap-file-creator might be brokenarchive.org and this being the only visiblearchive.org error but this still does not break the boot process. However, when using kernel versions unsupported by VirtualBox, many other things will be broken and the system will be unbootable anyhow.

Manual Swap File Creation[edit]

TODO: document

See Also[edit]

Footnotes[edit]

  1. ↑ Such as during Linux kernel module building (VirtualBox guest additions) as well as kernel header package upgrades.
  2. ↑ https://github.com/Kicksecure/swap-file-creator/blob/master/etc/default/swap-file-creatorarchive.org
  3. ↑ Live mode is detected if file /proc/cmdline contains string boot=live.
  4. ↑ https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/17055#comment:3archive.org
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