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SWAPON(8)		     System Manager's Manual		       SWAPON(8)

NAME
     swapon, swapoff, swapctl -- specify devices for paging and swapping

SYNOPSIS
     swapon -a | file ...
     swapoff -a | file ...
     swapctl [-AhklsU] [-a file ... | -d file ...]

DESCRIPTION
     The  swapon, swapoff and swapctl utilities are used to control swap devices
     in the system.  At boot time all swap entries in /etc/fstab are added auto-
     matically when the system goes multi-user.  Swap devices use a fixed inter-
     leave; the maximum number of devices is specified by the kernel  configura-
     tion  option  NSWAPDEV,  which is typically set to 4.  There is no priority
     mechanism.

     The swapon utility adds the specified swap devices to the system.	 If  the
     -a  option  is  used,  all swap devices in /etc/fstab will be added, unless
     their "noauto" option is also set.

     The swapoff utility removes the specified swap devices from the system.  If
     the -a option is used, all swap devices in /etc/fstab will be removed,  un-
     less  their  "noauto"  option is also set.  Note that swapoff will fail and
     refuse to remove a swap device if there is insufficient VM  (memory  +  re-
     maining  swap  devices)  to  run the system.  The swapoff utility must move
     swapped pages out of the device being removed which could lead to high sys-
     tem loads for a period of time, depending on how much data has been swapped
     out to that device.

     The swapctl utility exists primarily for those familiar with other BSDs and
     may be used to add, remove, or list swap devices.	Note that the -a  option
     is  used  differently  in swapctl and indicates that a specific list of de-
     vices should be added.  The -d option indicates that a specific list should
     be removed.  The -A and -U options to swapctl operate on all  swap  entries
     in /etc/fstab which do not have their "noauto" option set.

     Swap  information can be generated using the swapinfo(8) utility, pstat -s,
     or swapctl -l.  The swapctl utility has the following options  for  listing
     swap:

     -h      Output values in megabytes.

     -k      Output values in kilobytes.

     -l      List the devices making up system swap.

     -s      Print a summary line for system swap.

	     The  BLOCKSIZE  environment  variable  is	used if not specifically
	     overridden.  512 byte blocks are used by default.

FILES
     /dev/{ad,da}?s?b  standard paging devices
     /dev/md?	       memory disk devices
     /etc/fstab        ASCII file system description table

DIAGNOSTICS
     These utilities may fail for the reasons described in swapon(2).

SEE ALSO
     swapon(2), fstab(5), init(8), mdconfig(8), pstat(8), rc(8)

HISTORY
     The swapon utility appeared in 4.0BSD.  The swapoff and  swapctl  utilities
     appeared in FreeBSD 5.1.

FreeBSD 7.0			December 28, 2002		       SWAPON(8)

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