Sharing swap partition

arubin · 04-21-2004, 04:42 AM

I have a slackware installation and would like to install knoppix as well in a separate partition. Do I need a second swap partition or can the two distros share it?

Thanks

huibert.alblas · 04-21-2004, 05:46 AM

Hi,

I figure you will dual boot the different Distro's.
Then both can use the same swap partition.

You should only never _ever_ use the same swap partition with 2 or more Systems at the same time!

Have fun!

PankRat

patoche2 · 04-21-2004, 07:05 AM

Hi pankrat,

I'm planning to install as a debian and a slackware .And as arubin, I would like to use the same swap and home for both distro's. Do you know were to find a complete tuto ?

thanks

michaelk · 04-21-2004, 07:15 AM

The installer should either detect that you already have a swap partition or during the process of creating partitions for the install be able to select an existing partition to be used as swap.

arubin · 04-21-2004, 09:25 AM

Thanks.

Does that mean that when the system is shutdown the swap partition is empty?

mbegovic · 04-21-2004, 09:43 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by arubin
Thanks.

Does that mean that when the system is shutdown the swap partition is empty?

When the system shuts down, all the filesystems are unmounted, swap included, as far as I know. I am currently dual-booting Slackware and Gentoo, and sharing the swap partition. Gentoo was the first one installed, and Slackware recognized that there already was a swap partition. There is no problem with it.

huibert.alblas · 04-21-2004, 12:09 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by arubin
Thanks.

Does that mean that when the system is shutdown the swap partition is empty?

No, the swappartition is left as is,
when the operatingsystem boots up,
it wil initialize the swap as if it was dirty,
and will cleanup the parts before writing to it.

The OS asumes it is the only active OS writing to the swappartition,
and will write pretty anywhere it feels fit.

So, to answer the original question:

No, don't share swap between to OSses running simultaniously.
Yes, it is ok toouse one swap between OSses while dual(tripple) booting.