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How should I correctly set up my encrypted swap partition? How can I ensure that the setup persists?

I'm running 14.04 using encrypted home folder. I noticed that occasionally my machine would grind to a complete halt for a minute or so. I finally realized that my machine showed that it did not have any swap space set up and my memory was filling up and nothing could be swapped when this happened.

/dev/sda6 is the partition of interest in my case.

How I Made Swap Work Yesterday

I reformatted the swap partition to linux-swap format via gparted and put its UUID, obtained from blkid /dev/sda6, in the appropriate /etc/crypttab entry. I then rebooted the system. Swap file was available and working correctly.

How Swap Stopped Working Again

Uncertain.

Steps I've taken to diagnose this situation, things I modified, etc.:

  • free -m shows 0MB total swap space available

    dmays@vipertooth:~$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          5875       2238       3636        270         98       1007
-/+ buffers/cache:       1133       4741
Swap:            0          0          0

  • gparted shows the swap partition as "Unknown"

gparted screenshot -- /dev/sda6 is partition of interest

  • blkid /dev/sda6 returns exit code 2.

  • swapon -s shows only column headers

    dmays@vipertooth:~$ swapon -s
Filename                Type        Size    Used    Priority

  • swapon -a fails with exit code 255

    dmays@vipertooth:~$ sudo swapon -a
[sudo] password for dmays: 
swapon: /dev/mapper/cryptswap1: stat failed: No such file or directory

  • modified /etc/crypttab from yesterday

    cryptswap1 UUID=4602a330-ead0-4198-be26-47a5b16666e1 /dev/urandom swap,cipher=aes-cbc-essiv:sha256

  • examined fstab -- it appears my /home may not be encrypted???

    # <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
# / was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=b09ec379-a94d-4905-b4ac-2f5c62b5605d /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# /home was on /dev/sda7 during installation
UUID=d57bf732-77df-44fe-b547-d15a48dd1857 /home           ext4    defaults        0       2
# swap was on /dev/sda6 during installation
/dev/mapper/cryptswap1 none swap sw 0 0
dm78
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1 Answers1

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This appears to be a known bug.

Credit to redsandro's answer on a duplicate question for info about the bug and a quick fix for it.

I implemented the "Easy Fix" as stated in the above answer and by user foenhn-2 in a comment to the bug report. Even though this fix is functional I may attempt to get the offset=X method to work in order to keep the swap partition's UUID intact.

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dm78
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