Adding a swap file helps with performance, especially on machines with low memory. Here is my way to create one:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile1 bs=1024 count=4524288
#df -k
mkswap /swapfile1
chown root:root /swapfile1
swapon /swapfile1
echo '/swapfile1 swap swap defaults 0 0' >> /etc/fstab