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If running out of swap you can add 257MB more. First have a look at what you have available:

# free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 256216 252208 4008 118100 56996 46944 -/+ buffers/cache: 148268 107948 Swap: 224900 51268 173632

Next create a file without holes and a multiple of 4K in size:

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/extra-swap bs=1024 count=262144 262144+0 records in 262144+0 records out

Now mark it as a swap file by writing a signature to its beginning which contains some administrative information and is used by the kernel:

# mkswap /extra-swap Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 268431360 bytes

Now tell the kernel about the new swap file:

# swapon /extra-swap

Now check it is there!

# free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 256216 252448 3768 118100 56996 46944 -/+ buffers/cache: 148508 107708 Swap: 487036 51268 435768

To remove the swap file from usage:

# swapoff /extra-swap

You can add to /etc/fstab:

/extra-swap none swap sw 0 0

Then on boot when swapon -a is run the new swap will be added to swap space.

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