Ubuntu – Should I remove the swap partition on a system upgraded to 17.04

17.04partitioningswap

Ubuntu 17.04 doesn't have a swap partition, and I commented wondering,

If I just upgraded an older system that installed with a swap partition to 17.04, should I delete my old swap partition?

I have three SSD laptops with swap partitions, which had Ubuntu 16.10 on them a few days ago. Now, all are running version 17.04, but none have a /swapfile even after a few reboots.

Should I keep the old swap partition, or delete it?
Is the swap partition preventing /swapfile from being created, or would I end up with no swap at all?

Best Answer

Ubuntu 17.04 changed the default behavior of the installer from creating a swap partition to creating a swap file. (see the release notes).

With this noted, both Ubuntu pre-17.04 and post-17.04 support both a swap partition and a swap file.

As for whether you should switch or not, I'd look at a question specific to that for details. Summed up here for clarity though:

The main advantage of a swap file over a swap partition is that resizing a swap file is many times easier. Resizing a swap partition requires adjusting the partition layout, probably booting from a live disk if you want to do any real adjustment, and a lot of time to move your data around. The swap file is just a few commands, and can be done live.

In short, if you are happy with your current size of swap partition, there is no reason to change. It'll take just as much effort turning a swap partition into a swap file as it would resizing a swap partition, only difference being future resizes will be much easier.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – the safest way to remove a swap partition

Try to monitor your swap memory usage in a terminal with top or htop, which is more user friendly. If you don't have htop installed, you can install it with:

sudo apt-get install htop

With your amount of RAM, I would say that your swap usage is 0% a lot of time.

If you want to format your swap partition, first you have to disable the swap with the swapoff command. Then format the partition with mkfs.ext4 or mkfs. After that you need to edit your /etc/fstab so that the system will mount your new partition at the boot time.

You can also use a graphical application like Disks, which ships with Ubuntu.

Ubuntu – Does Ubuntu 20.04 installer skip creating a swap partition

Swap is now a file

Ubuntu 20.04 creates a swap file during installation. Swap partitions are not required anymore. This is irrespective of SSD or HDD.

Ubuntu started using a swap file instead of a partition from the version 17.04. See Default 17.04 swap file location for more.

Swap is still needed

The suggestion that you should disable or remove swap from SSD is rather old. it comes from the old time when SSDs would get corrupt with too many writes. Modern SSDs are more robust. So, it is okay to keep a swap file (or a swap partition, if you really need it) in the SSD.

I would keep the default swap file as is in the SSD unless you have some special needs and requirements. If you have enough RAM the swap file may not be used much and won't "speedup" the death of the SSD by any significant time. On the other hand, if you edit videos or work with lots of open tabs in Firefox the swap file will prevent your computer from crashing if it runs out of RAM.

Hope this helps