Amazon AMI Swapfile Setup

swap

sudo /bin/dd if=/dev/zero of=/var/swap1 bs=1G count=3  #(block size 1G for 3 which is 3GB in total)
# or sudo /bin/dd if=/dev/zero of=/var/swap1 bs=1M count=2048
sudo /sbin/mkswap /var/swap1
# Change permission so the swap file is secured.
sudo chmod 0600 /var/swap1
# Turn swap on
sudo /sbin/swapon /var/swap1

# Add auto (mount/)swapon when instance start
sudo vi /etc/fstab
# Add this to the file then save and exit
/var/swap1 swap swap defaults 0 0

# Then reboot to check the outcome
sudo reboot now
# Now you can use `top` and if you see something like this, you are good!
# Mem:   4050720k total,   768676k used,  3282044k free,    36148k buffers
# Swap:  2097148k total,        0k used,  2097148k free,   134536k cached