swapon: command not found

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 swapon command:

swapon: 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

swapon Command Examples

1. Consult /etc/fstab for devices marked sw. Use those in place of the devices argument.

# swapon -a

2. Used with -a. Don’t complain about missing devices.

# swapon -ae

3. Print help message, then exit.

# swapon -h

4. Specify a priority for the swap area. Higher priority areas will be used up before lower priority areas are used.

# swapon -p 5 /var/tmp/swapfile

5. Print swap usage summaries, then exit.

# swapon -s
Filename    Type  Size Used Priority
/dev/dm-1               partition 268435452 0 -1
/swapfile               file       102396 0 -2

6. Print version information, then exit.

# swapon -V
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