Swap Ansible Role¶

An Ansible role to create, enable, and persist a swapfile on Linux servers.

Features¶

Create or resize a swapfile
Enable or disable swap
Persist swap in /etc/fstab
Optional sysctl tuning for swap behavior
Fallocate or dd-based swapfile creation

Installation¶

Add the following to your requirements.yml:

roles:
  - name: swap
    src: https://gitlab.com/niclas-zone/tools/ansible/roles/swap.git
    version: 1.0.0
    scm: git

Then install:

ansible-galaxy install -r requirements.yml --force

Role Variables¶

Variable	Default Value	Description
`swap_state`	`"present"`	Desired swap state: `"present"` or `"absent"`
`swap_file_path`	`"/swapfile"`	Path to the swapfile
`swap_size_mb`	`2048`	Swapfile size in MB
`swap_use_fallocate`	`true`	Use `fallocate` to create the swapfile
`swap_file_mode`	`"0600"`	Swapfile permissions
`swap_persist`	`true`	Persist swap entry in `/etc/fstab`
`swap_fstab_options`	`"sw"`	Fstab options for the swapfile
`swap_swappiness`	`null`	Set `vm.swappiness` (null leaves unchanged)
`swap_vfs_cache_pressure`	`null`	Set `vm.vfs_cache_pressure` (null leaves unchanged)
`swap_manage_in_container`	`false`	Allow swap activation inside containers

Example Playbooks¶

Basic: Create a 1 GB swapfile¶

---
- hosts: servers
  become: true
  roles:
    - role: swap
      vars:
        swap_size_mb: 1024

Custom swapfile and sysctl tuning¶

---
- hosts: servers
  become: true
  roles:
    - role: swap
      vars:
        swap_file_path: "/var/swapfile"
        swap_size_mb: 4096
        swap_swappiness: 10
        swap_vfs_cache_pressure: 50

Disable swap¶

---
- hosts: servers
  become: true
  roles:
    - role: swap
      vars:
        swap_state: "absent"

Notes¶

This role manages a swapfile only. It does not modify existing swap partitions.
Swap activation is skipped in containers unless swap_manage_in_container: true.