fstab entry swap type and options?

Question

I've been looking around and seen two different things for options for swap partitions.

I've seen something like the line below:

UUID=UUID HERE none swap sw 0 0

and

UUID=UUID HERE none swap swap 0 0

What's the difference?

Answer 1

When the filesystem type is swap, neither of these options mean anything. In fact, the only option that makes sense is pri=n, specifying the swap space priority. Usually you don't need it and can just specify defaults:

UUID=foo   none   swap   defaults

(The mount point, as well as dump and pass fields, are irrelevant too.)