✅ Introduction

While articles about AI and high-performance GPUs are everywhere these days, many users are actually working with low-spec environments like free-tier Ubuntu servers, e2-micro (GCP), and Oracle Cloud’s Free Tier.

I’m one of them. When I was working with a VSCode SSH connection, it would suddenly disconnect in the middle of a session. Sometimes my work-in-progress code would be lost, and I had experiences where I was forced to switch back to TeraTerm.

🧪 Current Machine Specs and Problems

Here are the specs for the Ubuntu instance I’m using:

$ free
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:          979708      526436       98036        1556      536932      453272
Swap:              0           0           0

• About 1GB of memory
• No Swap configured
• VSCode disconnects during long sessions

In this state, just running a slightly heavy process can trigger an “Out of Memory (OOM)” error, causing the VSCode connection to time out and disconnect.

🛠 Solution: Introducing a Swap File

By setting up a Swap file, you create an emergency refuge for when physical memory runs out. Here are the steps:

1. Create a swap file (e.g., 1GB)

sudo fallocate -l 1G /swapfile

Or, for better compatibility:

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1M count=1024

Output:

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1M count=1024
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 17.8276 s, 60.2 MB/s

2. Set permissions

sudo chmod 600 /swapfile

3. Initialize and enable

sudo mkswap /swapfile
sudo swapon /swapfile

Output:

sudo mkswap /swapfile
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 1024 MiB (1073737728 bytes)
no label, UUID=ea117786-54d3-4317-b575-130df8e58c5b

4. Make it persistent (enable after reboot)

echo '/swapfile none swap sw 0 0' | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab

Output:

/swapfile none swap sw 0 0

5. Check for duplicate lines in /etc/fstab

cat /etc/fstab

Make sure a line like the one below is not written more than once:

/swapfile none swap sw 0 0

❌ Bad Example (What I had):

/swapfile none swap sw 0 0
/swapfile none swap sw 0 0

✅ Good Example:

/swapfile none swap sw 0 0

🔧 How to fix duplicates:

Open the file with:

sudo nano /etc/fstab

or

sudo vi /etc/fstab

Then, delete one of the duplicate lines and save the file.

💡 Why is this important?

• Having duplicate lines in fstab can cause swap area duplication errors or mount failures during boot.
• This is especially true for cloud-init based instances (e.g., GCP/Oracle) where the boot process is sensitive.

🔍 What happened after?

My VSCode SSH connection became extremely stable, and I could go back to my normal development workflow. It’s especially perfect for tasks where you don’t need AI-level resources but just want to write some simple Python scripts.

💬 Summary

VSCode disconnections aren’t just caused by unstable connections; they can also be related to insufficient memory on the server side.

Even on e2-micro or Oracle Cloud’s free tier, you can create a sufficiently comfortable development environment by setting up a swap file. “A dramatic improvement with a little tweak”—this kind of down-to-earth improvement should be more valuable than ever in the times to come.

🧩 Bonus: First Aid for VSCode Disconnections

• Close and reopen the VSCode SSH session.
• If necessary, delete the .vscode-server directory and let it rebuild.
• For long-running tasks, using screen or tmux is also highly recommended.