Solved: Error with swapon: swapon failed: Invalid argument.
Today in this article, we will look at an interesting issue where we are getting error while adding new swap.
I. Issue/Error Message
bash-4.2$ sudo swapon -a swapon: /oracle/swapfile: swapon failed: Invalid argument
II. Analysis
Such error message says that the swapfile or swap disk is not identified as a valid swap area by default.
Lets check out the error message.
bash-4.2$ tail -50f /var/log/messages Apr 21 05:42:13 ngelinux001 kernel: swapon: swapfile has holes
III. Solution
We can resolve this issue by deleting old swap file /oracle/swapfile and create new one and then re-formatting it as swap.
bash-4.2$ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/oracle/swapfile bs=1M count=4100 status=progress Apr 21 05:47:42 ngelinux001 sudo: user : TTY=pts/5 ; PWD=/oracle ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/dd if=/dev/zero of=/oracle/swapfile bs=1M count=4100 status=progress 3381657600 bytes (3.4 GB) copied, 4.001839 s, 845 MB/s 4100+0 records in 4100+0 records out 4299161600 bytes (4.3 GB) copied, 4.84931 s, 887 MB/s bash-4.2$ bash-4.2$ sudo mkswap /oracle/swapfile Apr 21 05:51:02 ngelinux001 sudo: user : TTY=pts/5 ; PWD=/var/log ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/sbin/mkswap /oracle/swapfile Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 4198396 KiB no label, UUID=43ebe7a2-3844-4da4-aaa7-3ed0b5a7f6f0 bash-4.2$ swapon -a Apr 21 05:51:14 ngelinux001 sudo: user : TTY=pts/5 ; PWD=/var/log ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/sbin/swapon -a Apr 21 05:51:14 ngelinux001 kernel: Adding 4198396k swap on /oracle/swapfile. Priority:-2 extents:2 across:4328472k FS
As we can see above by creating the swapfile again via dd command and then turning it on, resolved the issue.