freebsd-dev/sbin/swapon/swapon.8

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.\"     @(#)swapon.8	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/5/93
.\" $FreeBSD$
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.Dd December 28, 2002
.Dt SWAPON 8
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm swapon , swapoff , swapctl
.Nd "specify devices for paging and swapping"
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm swapon Ar
.Nm swapon Fl a
.Nm swapoff Ar
.Nm swapoff Fl a
.Nm swapctl
.Op Fl AhklsU
.Oo
.Fl a Ar
|
.Fl d Ar
.Oc
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm swapon , swapoff
and
.Nm swapctl
utilities are used to control swap devices in the system.
At boot time all swap entries in
.Pa /etc/fstab
are added automatically when the system goes multi-user.
Swap devices use a fixed interleave; the maximum number of devices
is specified by the kernel configuration option
.Dv NSWAPDEV ,
which is typically set to 4.
There is no priority mechanism.
.Pp
The
.Nm swapon
utility adds the specified swap devices to the system.
If the
.Fl a
option is used, all swap devices in
.Pa /etc/fstab
will be added, unless their
.Dq noauto
option is also set.
.Pp
The
.Nm swapoff
utility removes the specified swap devices from the system.
If the
.Fl a
option is used, all swap devices in
.Pa /etc/fstab
will be removed, unless their
.Dq noauto
option is also set.
Note that
.Nm swapoff
will fail and refuse to remove a swap device if there is insufficient
VM (memory + remaining swap devices) to run the system.
The
.Nm swapoff
utility
must move swapped pages out of the device being removed which could
lead to high system loads for a period of time, depending on how
much data has been swapped out to that device.
.Pp
The
.Nm swapctl
utility exists primarily for those familiar with other
.Bx Ns s
and may be
used to add, remove, or list swap devices.
Note that the
.Fl a
option is used differently in
.Nm swapctl
and indicates that a specific list of devices should be added.
The
.Fl d
option indicates that a specific list should be removed.
The
.Fl A
and
.Fl U
options to
.Nm swapctl
operate on all swap entries in
.Pa /etc/fstab
which do not have their
.Dq noauto
option set.
.Pp
Swap information can be generated using the
.Xr swapinfo 8
utility,
.Nm pstat
.Fl s ,
or
.Nm swapctl
.Fl l .
The
.Nm swapctl
utility has the following options for listing swap:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Fl h
Output values in megabytes.
.It Fl k
Output values in kilobytes.
.It Fl l
List the devices making up system swap.
.It Fl s
Print a summary line for system swap.
.Pp
The
.Ev BLOCKSIZE
environment variable is used if not specifically
overridden.
512 byte blocks are used by default.
.El
.Sh DIAGNOSTICS
These utilities may fail for the reasons described in
.Xr swapon 2 .
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr swapon 2 ,
.Xr fstab 5 ,
.Xr init 8 ,
.Xr mdconfig 8 ,
.Xr pstat 8 ,
.Xr rc 8
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width ".Pa /dev/{ad,da}?s?b" -compact
.It Pa /dev/{ad,da}?s?b
standard paging devices
.It Pa /dev/md?
memory disk devices
.It Pa /etc/fstab
.Tn ASCII
file system description table
.El
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm swapon
utility appeared in
.Bx 4.0 .
The
.Nm swapoff
and
.Nm swapctl
utilities appeared in
.Fx 5.1 .