Manipulating swap space on a running Solaris system

Listing swap files in use

The following command will list all active swap files:

  swap -l

with output looking like this:

  swapfile             dev  swaplo blocks   free
  /dev/md/dsk/d10     85,10     16 8389632 8389632

Adding swap space

So you need more swap temporarily. Here's how:

1. Make a file to add to swap

  mkfile 2g /export/tempfile

This will crate a 2Gb file.

2. Add the file to the swap pool

  swap -a /export/tempfile

then check it worked with

  swap -l
  
  swapfile             dev  swaplo blocks   free
  /dev/md/dsk/d10     85,10     16 8389632 8389632
  /export/tempfile      -       16 6291440 6291440

Delete a swap file

Finished with your temporary swap file. Delete it:

 swap -d /export/tempfile

Adding Swap space to a system with ZFS root pool

So the system you're running is using as ZFS based root pool to boot. In order to add swap space above what the system was built with you will need to first create a new ZFS pool and then add it to swap:

1. Create a new ZFS pool

 zfs create -V 2G rpool/swap2

2. Add the file associated with the new pool to the running swap space

 swap -a /dev/zvol/dsk/rpool/swap2

As per usual the added swap space will disappear after a reboot, but you'll have to manually delete the new ZFS pool you've created.