How to add temporary swap file

If you have less than 2GB of memory (between your RAM and SWAP), you can add temporary swap space by creating a temporary swap file. This way you do not have to use a raw device or even more drastic, rebuild your system.

As root, make a file that will act as additional swap space, let's say about 500MB:

# dd if=/dev/zero of=tempswap bs=1k count=500000

Now we should change the file permissions:

# chmod 600 tempswap

Finally we format the "partition" as swap and add it to the swap space:

# mke2fs tempswap
# mkswap tempswap
# swapon tempswap