Add swapfile guide article drafts

content/blog/correct-swapfile-guide/index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,185 @@
+---
+
+title: Guide to the correct swapfile setup
+date: 2023-01-23T20:26:18-06:00
+lastmod: 2023-01-23T20:26:18-06:00
+toc: true
+comments: true
+draft: true
+
+authors:
+  - bbaovanc
+
+categories:
+  - guides
+  - linux
+  - tips-and-tricks
+
+tags:
+  - linux-swap
+  - swapfile
+
+series:
+  - swapfile-guide
+
+# this will be shown for the article in list pages and in the page metadata
+# it can be either an image or video (this might change in the future, however)
+resources:
+  - name: feature
+    src: something.webp
+    title: Some image (image format can be anything; webp is just an example)
+
+---
+
+There is a lot of conflicting information out there on how to create a swapfile
+correctly. Although these guides (should) all work perfeclty fine, I spent the
+time to research and find out what is actually the most correct.
+
+In summary: make sure to use the `dd` command to create the swapfile, and create
+an fstab entry that looks similar to `/swapfile none swap sw 0 0`. In this
+article, I will go more in-depth into the correct steps to create a swapfile on
+Linux, and explain each step.
+
+<!--more-->
+
+## Tutorial
+
+{{< include path="include/bashsession.md" markdown=true >}}
+
+### Step 1: Create the file
+
+The first step is to allocate the file.
+
+```bashsession
+# dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1M count=[size in MiB] status=progress
+```
+
+Replace `[size in MiB]` with the size of your swapfile in Mebibytes (MiB). You
+can use [this online converter](https://www.convertunits.com/from/GiB/to/MiB) to
+convert from Gibibytes (GiB, often confused with Gigabytes, but that doesn't
+matter right now) to MiB, which you can put in the command.
+
+Or you can look at this table for common sizes:
+
+{{< table >}}
+| GiB | MiB         |
+|-----|-------------|
+| 1   | count=1024  |
+| 2   | count=2048  |
+| 3   | count=3072  |
+| 4   | count=4096  |
+| 8   | count=8192  |
+| 16  | count=16384 |
+{{< /table >}}
+
+{{< aside example >}}
+
+To create a swapfile 4 GiB in size, you would run:
+
+```bashsession
+# dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1M count=4096 status=progress
+4096+0 records in
+4096+0 records out
+4294967296 bytes (4.3 GB, 4.0 GiB) copied, 0.960183 s, 4.5 GB/s
+```
+
+{{< /aside >}}
+
+If you aren't sure how big your swapfile should be, take a look at the [Ubuntu
+Swap FAQ][ubuntu-swapfaq]. It has a table of common RAM sizes and how much swap
+you should use.
+
+[ubuntu-swapfaq]: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq#How_much_swap_do_I_need.3F
+
+However, I would take it with a grain of salt; for the with hibernation column,
+you probably don't need as much as it says. On my computer I have 32 GiB of RAM,
+but only a 16 GiB swap partition.[^expand-swap-easily-lvm]
+
+Remember that if that's not enough, you can add always multiple swapfiles later.
+
+[^expand-swap-easily-lvm]: If it's not enough, I can still expand the partition
+  easily since I use [LVM](https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/LVM) on my drive.
+
+### Step 2: Change swapfile permissions
+
+The swapfile should only be readable by the system (`root` user). Run this
+command to change it:
+
+```bashsession
+# chmod 600 /swapfile
+```
+
+### Step 3: Format the swapfile
+
+Use the `mkswap` command to format the file to be used as swap (basically just
+add a header to identify it):
+
+```bashsession
+# mkswap /swapfile
+Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 4 GiB (4294963200 bytes)
+no label, UUID=a0b87eca-b951-4344-be2d-020d77cdef48
+```
+
+### Step 4: Create an entry in `/etc/fstab`
+
+An entry needs to be added to `/etc/fstab` for the swapfile to be enabled during
+bootup. Open `/etc/fstab` in a text editor, and add this line to the end (add
+spaces to line up with other entries if you want, whitespace is ignored):
+
+```text
+/swapfile none swap sw 0 0
+```
+
+{{< aside note >}}
+
+Above, I have filled the "options" field with `sw`. This is actually a result of
+[cargo culting](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cargo_culting). On Linux, the
+`sw` option [isn't valid for `swapon` and is ignored][swapon-options-source].
+However, the field does need to be filled out with something, so feel free to
+put something funny (do let me know in the comments if this somehow breaks
+something though).
+
+[swapon-options-source]: https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/blob/2ea397239683270a0fc8cd3b72ed5457f52dbda8/sys-utils/swapon.c#L699
+
+{{< /aside >}}
+
+### Step 5: Enable the swapfile
+
+Adding the `fstab` entry won't enable the swapfile until a reboot. To enable it
+now, use the `swapon` command.
+
+```bashsession
+# swapon /swapfile
+```
+
+### Finally: check the swap status
+
+Use `swapon` and `free` to verify that your new swapfile has been added:
+
+```bashsession
+$ swapon --show
+NAME       TYPE SIZE USED PRIO
+/swapfile  file   4G   0B   -2
+
+$ free -h
+               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
+Mem:            31Gi       3.6Gi        20Gi       233Mi       6.9Gi        26Gi
+Swap:          4.0Gi          0B       4.0Gi
+```
+
+{{< aside note >}}
+
+If you get an error saying that the `swapon` command was not found, try running
+it as `root` (using `sudo`). On Debian-based distributions the `swapon` command
+is not available to regular users.
+
+```bashsession
+$ swapon --show
+bash: swapon: command not found
+
+# swapon --show
+NAME      TYPE SIZE USED PRIO
+/swapfile file   4G   0B   -2
+```
+
+{{< /aside >}}

content/blog/swapfile-guide-explained/index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
+---
+
+title: Swapfile guide explained
+date: 2023-01-23T20:26:18-06:00
+lastmod: 2023-01-23T20:26:18-06:00
+toc: true
+comments: true
+draft: true
+
+authors:
+  - bbaovanc
+
+categories:
+  - linux
+
+tags:
+  - linux-swap
+  - swapfile
+
+series:
+  - swapfile-guide
+
+# this will be shown for the article in list pages and in the page metadata
+# it can be either an image or video (this might change in the future, however)
+resources:
+  - name: feature
+    src: something.webp
+    title: Some image (image format can be anything; webp is just an example)
+
+---
+
+This page is about something. All the content before the "more" HTML comment
+below will become the summary, which will be used in list pages and in the meta
+tags on the article.
+
+Or, if you don't want your description to be at the top of the article, you can
+set your own `description` in the front matter and it will override this. See
+the [Content Summaries](https://gohugo.io/content-management/summaries/) page on
+the Hugo docs for more information.
+
+<!--more-->
+
+## Allocating the file
+
+- use `dd` instead of `fallocate`
+- https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/swapon.8.html#NOTES
+  - https://man.archlinux.org/man/core/util-linux/swapon.8.en#Files_with_holes
+
+## Options field
+
+- https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/365961/525130
+- https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/365954/525130
+- https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/blob/2ea397239683270a0fc8cd3b72ed5457f52dbda8/sys-utils/swapon.c#L699