The swapon command is used to activate a swap partition in a specified device. The swapoff command is used to deactivate the swap space on a device.
Some of the frequently used swapon and swapoff command options are given in the following table.
| Option | Used To |
|---|---|
| swapon -e | Skip non-existent devices. |
| swapon -a | Activate all of swap space. |
| swapoff -a | Deactivate all of swap space. |
If you encounter the below error while running the swapoff command:
swapoff: command not found
you may try installing the below package as per your choice of distribution:
| OS Distribution | Command |
|---|---|
| OS X | brew install util-linux |
| Debian | apt-get install mount |
| Ubuntu | apt-get install mount |
| Alpine | apk add util-linux |
| Arch Linux | pacman -S util-linux |
| Kali Linux | apt-get install mount |
| CentOS | yum install util-linux |
| Fedora | dnf install util-linux |
| Raspbian | apt-get install loop-aes-utils |
swapoff Command Examples
1. Consult /etc/fstab for devices marked sw. Use those in place of the device argument.
# swapoff -a
2. Print help message and then exit.
# swapoff -h
3. Display version number and then exit.
# swapoff -V
4. Disable swap by label of a device or file:
# swapoff -L swap1
5. Disable a given swap partition:
# swapoff /dev/sdb7
6. Disable a given swap file:
# swapoff path/to/file