How can I zerofill the /swapfile without wiping out what makes it a swapfile?
How can I zerofill the /swapfile without wiping out what makes it a swapfile?
I have a script that I run in order to optimize the disk space prior to backing up a virtual guest (really doesn't matter too much which hypervisor is used).
Modern Ubuntu versions (e.g. 18.04) seem to default to using a /swapfile rather than a partition for the purpose. That's fine, too.
/swapfile
However, I'd like to zerofill the swap file along with the root partition containing it.
With swap partitions this was relatively painless as there was always a way to extract the existing $UUID from the swap partition and - after zerofilling the partition - run mkswap -U $UUID to re-create said swap partition.
$UUID
mkswap -U $UUID
However, with the /swapfile I don't see how to do that. While I realize that you can't mount a /swapfile by UUID in /etc/fstab, I'd still want to retain the UUID.
/swapfile
/swapfile
/etc/fstab
So I reckon need one of the following to proceed:
mkswap -U $UUID
blkid
/dev/disk/by-uuid/$UUID
1 Answer
1
This won’t clear the swap file as thoroughly as re-creating it, but if you clear it after skipping the first 4KiB (strictly speaking, the first page, which depends on your architecture), you won’t touch any of the structures which identify a swap file.
blkid works fine on swap files too:
blkid
$ mkswap swap
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 512 MiB (536866816 bytes)
no label, UUID=7916b81f-1faa-4b7d-84ef-b0bf2f75dbbc
$ blkid swap
swap: UUID="7916b81f-1faa-4b7d-84ef-b0bf2f75dbbc" TYPE="swap"
The header format is defined in the kernel: the old format has a magic value at the end of the first page, the new format combines that with a 1KiB free area, then a number of fields (version, size, bad pages, UUID, label) which all fit comfortably inside the first page.
blkid
dd
Right, reading the UUID and re-creating the swap file is probably the easier option.
– Stephen Kitt
Aug 20 at 14:23
@0xC0000022L also look into the output format options of
blkid. Depending on the version, you might be able to do blkid swap -o value -s uuid to extract just the UUID.– muru
Aug 21 at 3:54
blkid
blkid swap -o value -s uuid
@muru thanks, already did and opted for
blkid -o export <file> which I pipe through sed to prepend local to each line and then eval using Bash. This way I have the values in my function as local environment variables right away.– 0xC0000022L
Aug 21 at 8:30
blkid -o export <file>
sed
local
eval
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Wow, hands down the fastest answer I ever received on any StackExchange site. Thanks. I frankly never used
blkidwith a parameter. Guess I should be doing that rather than, for example, usingddwith an offset.– 0xC0000022L
Aug 20 at 14:03