<![CDATA[HOWTO: Remove SWAP post-install and resize /]]>Hi all,

I managed to install 2.3.2 on a 1GB Compactflash.

Due to the ammount of RAM in the system, the SWAP partition is not needed.

For those of you who forgot to disable SWAP during setup or moved to SSD later or for what ever reason this should be handy …

get ssh and connect to box / or via console

STEP ONE: Get your disk info:

/root: gpart show ada0
=>     63  1989729  ada0  MBR  (972M)
       63  1989729     1  freebsd  [active]  (972M)

my cf card is rec. as the only IDE dev so ada0

in slice 1 of the UFS we can find the / of pfSense:

/root: gpart show ada0s1
=>      0  1989729  ada0s1  BSD  (972M)
        0       16          - free -  (8.0K)
       16  1989713       1  freebsd-ufs  (972M)
       1234 5678          2  swap~  (123MB)


/root: df -h
Filesystem      Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/ada0s1a    937M    593M    268M    69%    /
devfs           1.0K    1.0K      0B   100%    /dev
/dev/md0        3.4M    112K    3.0M     3%    /var/run
devfs           1.0K    1.0K      0B   100%    /var/dhcpd/dev

see that / has the same size as slice 1 :

63  1989729     1  freebsd  [active]  (972M)
/dev/ada0s1a    937M    593M    268M    69%    /

STEP TWO: ok … so we need to disable swap ...
(i know we can do by swapof but i think this is fine either... )

/root: edit /etc/fstab

in fstab comment the line with ~swap~  by adding a # at the beginning

like this:

# Device                Mountpoint      FStype  Options         Dump    Pass#
/dev/ada0s1a            /               ufs     rw              1       1
#/dev/label/swap0               none            swap    sw              0      0

note that in pfSense default fstab the / partition is mounted by ufsid
… better change that now to ada0s1 or where ever your / partition is hanging around ...

otherwise later after resizing of the slize the ufsid changes and pfSense will hang in boot...

Reboot...

After reboot u can see that there is no swap in top:

/root:top

last pid: 61459;  load averages:  0.00,  0.05,  0.12    up 0+00:38:53  02:17:44
43 processes:  1 running, 42 sleeping
CPU:  0.0% user,  0.0% nice,  1.2% system,  2.0% interrupt, 96.9% idle
Mem: 45M Active, 36M Inact, 54M Wired, 43M Buf, 8228M Free
Swap:

STEP THREE: ok so now let's delete the SWAP partition…

/root: gpart delete ada0s1b
---bla bla deleted...

it is ada0s1b because it is the second sub(is that the correct word ?)  in slice 1 in ada0:


=>      0  1989729  ada0s1  BSD  (972M)
        0       16          - free -  (8.0K)
       16  1989713       1  freebsd-ufs  (972M)
       1234 5678          2  swap~  (123MB)

after that we can resize the /

we wanna resize to maximum capacity so we dont need -s param. Otherwise u could specify the final size by eg. -s 4GB
-i is index of / … so in our example 1

/root: gpart resize -i 1 (-s 4GB) ada0s1

after that we can resize our filesystem by doing:

growfs /dev/ada0s1
yes

bla bla warning bla bla... 
done...

now you have the new filesystem size….

you can show it in dashboard or in # by

/root: df -h

please feel free to leave a comment if sth is wrong or u know it better …
also if you have any questions or sth. ...
Sorry 4 my english... it's my second language ...

Greets

Chris

]]>https://forum.netgate.com/topic/107375/howto-remove-swap-post-install-and-resizeRSS for NodeFri, 13 Mar 2026 11:42:18 GMTWed, 02 Nov 2016 01:30:21 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to HOWTO: Remove SWAP post-install and resize / on Sun, 13 Apr 2025 13:07:34 GMT]]>@jazzl0ver Awesome, thanks 🎯

[root@gw-2 ~]# /sbin/glabel label swap0 /dev/blabla

was exactly the part which I have been missing 🏷

And why:

[root@gw-2 ~]# glabel list

Didn't showed me anything 🔑

]]>https://forum.netgate.com/post/1212167https://forum.netgate.com/post/1212167Sun, 13 Apr 2025 13:07:34 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to HOWTO: Remove SWAP post-install and resize / on Thu, 05 Oct 2023 06:36:53 GMT]]>Just the refreshment (based on this thread and on https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/117023/expanding-the-disk-size-on-pfsense-under-vmware-esxi). pfSense is a Proxmox VM, virtual hard drive is virtio0.

[root@gw-2 ~]# swapoff -a
swapoff: removing /dev/label/swap0 as swap device

[root@gw-2 ~]# df -h /
Filesystem                     Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/ufsid/59d3a17dccecce22    2.9G    2.5G    180M    93%    /

[root@gw-2 ~]# gpart show
=>     63  8388545  vtbd0  MBR  (4.0G)
       63  8388513      1  freebsd  [active]  (4.0G)
  8388576       32         - free -  (16K)

=>      0  8388513  vtbd0s1  BSD  (4.0G)
        0       16           - free -  (8.0K)
       16  6291345        1  freebsd-ufs  (3.0G)
  6291361  2097152        2  freebsd-swap  (1.0G)

After the virtual drive expansion (added 2G in the Proxmox interface):

[root@gw-2 ~]# gpart show
=>      63  12582849  vtbd0  MBR  (6.0G)
        63   8388513      1  freebsd  [active]  (4.0G)
   8388576   4194336         - free -  (2.0G)

=>      0  8388513  vtbd0s1  BSD  (4.0G)
        0       16           - free -  (8.0K)
       16  6291345        1  freebsd-ufs  (3.0G)
  6291361  2097152        2  freebsd-swap  (1.0G)

[root@gw-2 ~]# gpart resize -i 1 vtbd0
vtbd0s1 resized
[root@gw-2 ~]# gpart show
=>      63  12582849  vtbd0  MBR  (6.0G)
        63  12582849      1  freebsd  [active]  (6.0G)

=>       0  12582849  vtbd0s1  BSD  (6.0G)
         0        16           - free -  (8.0K)
        16   6291345        1  freebsd-ufs  (3.0G)
   6291361   6291488           - free -  (3.0G)

[root@gw-2 ~]# gpart resize -i 1 -s 5GB vtbd0s1
vtbd0s1a resized
[root@gw-2 ~]# gpart show
=>      63  12582849  vtbd0  MBR  (6.0G)
        63  12582849      1  freebsd  [active]  (6.0G)

=>       0  12582849  vtbd0s1  BSD  (6.0G)
         0        16           - free -  (8.0K)
        16  10485760        1  freebsd-ufs  (5.0G)
  10485776   2097073           - free -  (1.0G)

[root@gw-2 ~]# growfs /dev/ufsid/59d3a17dccecce22
Device is mounted read-write; resizing will result in temporary write suspension for /.
It's strongly recommended to make a backup before growing the file system.
OK to grow filesystem on /dev/ufsid/59d3a17dccecce22, mounted on /, from 3.0GB to 5.0GB? [yes/no] yes
super-block backups (for fsck_ffs -b #) at:
 6411392, 7693632, 8975872, 10258112

[root@gw-2 ~]# df -h /
Filesystem                     Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/ufsid/59d3a17dccecce22    4.8G    2.5G    1.9G    56%    /

[root@gw-2 ~]# gpart add -t freebsd-swap vtbd0s1
vtbd0s1b added
[root@gw-2 ~]# /sbin/glabel label swap0 /dev/vtbd0s1b
[root@gw-2 ~]# swapon -a
swapon: adding /dev/label/swap0 as swap device
]]>https://forum.netgate.com/post/1128465https://forum.netgate.com/post/1128465Thu, 05 Oct 2023 06:36:53 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to HOWTO: Remove SWAP post-install and resize / on Sun, 11 Dec 2016 10:47:22 GMT]]>Notes:

  • You could (and probably should) use /usr/local/sbin/ufslabels.sh to switch /etc/fstab to using the labels again after you are done.
  • Using /etc/rc.d/growfs from single user mode would probably take care of everything once you've nuked the swap partition.
]]>https://forum.netgate.com/post/666483https://forum.netgate.com/post/666483Sun, 11 Dec 2016 10:47:22 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to HOWTO: Remove SWAP post-install and resize / on Sun, 11 Dec 2016 10:13:21 GMT]]>Small remarks:

1. fstab now using ufsid addressing, so instead of /dev/ada0s1a I see /dev/ufsid/blablabla. Replace it with correct string - /dev/ada0s1a cause successful boot.
2. gpart delete ada0s1b return "Option 'i' not specified", so I need to gpart show and make this coomand - gpart delete -i 2 /dev/ada0s1
3. Command growfs /dev/ada0s1 return "superblock not recognized", so I replace command with growfs /dev/ada0s1a

After that, my swap come part of / and usage decreased form 99 to 73 percent.

Big thanks for this great HOW-TO

]]>https://forum.netgate.com/post/666482https://forum.netgate.com/post/666482Sun, 11 Dec 2016 10:13:21 GMT