zram compresses swap partitions into RAM for performance.

You need Linux kernel version 2.6.37.1 or better to use zram.

First you have to setup your rpm build environment. For details see How to create an RPM package - Preparing your system.

# Short version of the howto
sudo yum install @development-tools fedora-packager
rpmdev-setuptree

# the real thing(tm)
make rpm
sudo rpm -Uhv ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/noarch/zram-*.noarch.rpm

There are 4 files you need to enable zram for Fedora. They are:

• zramstart
• zramstat
• zramstop
• zram.service

All these files can be found in the project folder.

Place "zramstart", zramstat and "zramstop" in the following folder.

__/usr/sbin__

Place "zram.service" in the following folder.

__/lib/systemd/system__

Place "zram" in the following folder.

__/etc/sysconfig__

As root, run the following command to enable zram for Fedora.

systemctl daemon-reload

sudo systemctl enable zram.service
sudo systemctl start zram.service

Run the following command to make sure the service started properly.

sudo systemctl status zram.service

The output should look like this:

zram.service - Enable compressed swap in memory using zram
    Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/zram.service; enabled)
    Active: active (exited) since Sun, 02 Oct 2011 22:46:31 -0400; 44min ago
    Process: 942 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/zramstart (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
    CGroup: name=systemd:/system/zram.service

To see how well your compressed swap performs run

zramstat # no sudo needed

The output looks like this:

/dev/zram0:     362.18% (180998144 -> 49973309)
/dev/zram1:     356.50% (180924416 -> 50749160)

This means 180,998,144 bytes got compressed to 49,973,309 bytes. The "swapped" memory is 362.18% of the RAM used. That's it!

The zramstart and zramstop scripts were written by Sergey Davidoff of Elementary OS. The zramstat script and RPM packaging bits by Doncho N. Gunchev.

• http://www.webupd8.org/2011/10/increased-performance-in-linux-with.html
• http://code.google.com/p/compcache
• http://weirdfellow.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/compressed-ram-with-zram/