swapoff

Disable devices and files for paging and swapping.

Synopsis

swapoff device...
swapoff -a

Calls swapoff(2) to disable swapping on the specified device or file. The kernel moves all swap pages back to RAM before deactivating the area, which may take significant time if the swap is heavily used.

`--all` mode

Reads /proc/swaps to find all active swap areas and disables each one.

Inputs

Source	Purpose
Device/file path	Target to disable
`/proc/swaps`	Enumerate active swap areas for `--all`

Outputs

swapoff(2) syscall to disable swap

Syscalls

Syscall	Description
`swapoff(2)`	Disable swapping on a device/file

Command-line options

Option	Description
`-a, --all`	Disable all active swap areas
`-v, --verbose`	Verbose output
`-h, --help`	Display help
`-V, --version`	Display version

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	All succeeded
4	swapoff(2) failed
8	Non-syscall system error
32	All failed (`--all` mode)
64	Some failed (`--all` mode)

Permissions

Requires CAP_SYS_ADMIN.

Notes

swapoff may take a long time if the swap area is heavily used, as all pages must be paged back into RAM.
If there isn’t enough free RAM to absorb the swap contents, swapoff will fail with ENOMEM.

Not yet implemented

-L, -U label/UUID specifiers (needs libblkid)

linuxutils