--- On Thu, 19/5/11, Stan Hoeppner <stan@hardwarefreak.com> wrote:

From: Stan Hoeppner <redacted>
Subject: Re: Best way to create RAID-6 for swap partition - existing one failed
To: "Gavin Flower" <redacted>
Cc: linux-raid@vger.kernel.org, neilb@suse.de, mb@gem.win.co.nz
Date: Thursday, 19 May, 2011, 6:59

[...]

Forget using a partition.  Simply use a swap
file.  This example creates
a 1GB swap file in the / filesystem.  You can locate
it on any
filesystem you wish.

# swappoff -a
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile1 bs=1024 count=1048576
# mkswap /swapfile1
# swapon /swapfile1
# vi /etc/fstab
Add:
/swapfile1 swap swap defaults 0 0

and remove your old entry for the failed swap partition.

There is little performance difference between swap files
and swap
partitions with modern kernels.  The kernel will map
the disk location
of the swap file and perform direct disk access, bypassing
the
filesystem and buffer cache.

-- 
Stan

I just checked the man page for mkswap, it still recommends using a partition.

"WARNING
       The swap header does not touch the first block.  A boot loader or  disk label can be there, but it is not a recommended setup.  The recommended setup is to use a separate partition for a Linux swap area."

I am curious to know the tradeoffs between having a file and using a partition for swap.  While it may not make much difference in my current situation, it might to others.

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