Sharing swap partitions

Jongi · 10-11-2005, 05:29 AM

Can SUSE share its swap partition with another Linux install?

Nylex · 10-11-2005, 07:40 AM

I can't imagine why it wouldn't be able to. When you install your other distro, just choose to use your existing swap partition, rather than create a new one. There should be an option for that somewhere.

MensaWater · 10-11-2005, 07:48 AM

?

Do you mean when you're booted into one distro on a single machine then want to shut it down and boot into a different one on the same machine? If so it seems it would be OK.

If however you mean you have external storage and want to have two separate running servers share the same swap partition I doubt it would work. Even if you could somehow get that going you wouldn't want to because neither OS would respect items paged out to the disk by the other OS as they wouldn't know about it.

Jongi · 10-12-2005, 04:50 AM

Nylex: I imagined I should be able to. Thanks.

jlightner: the first one

grautu · 10-12-2005, 06:21 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Jongi
Can SUSE share its swap partition with another Linux install?

Hi!
Definitely YES! And not only SUSE but any other LINUX distribution. And not only two but a lot. Keep in mind that two such distributions can not be active concomitantly. Therefore each one (among a lot) if active, activates in turn the swap partition for its own use and disactivate it when shutting down.

syg00 · 10-12-2005, 07:52 AM

Provided there is no persistant data in swap, the enthusiastic advice offered above might hold.

An example of where it won't is Suse on a laptop, and suspend2 in use.
Nothing is ever as simple as it seems.

Jongi · 10-12-2005, 08:02 AM

Well it's a desktop pc which will either have SUSE or FC4 running at any one time

grautu · 10-12-2005, 08:36 AM

Hello!
Thanks syg00 for pointing out! Frankly, when I learned the idea of sharing swap (idea which I did verify and I'm now currently applying) I did ask miself whether or not "swap" could retain in some way useful data. So since not knowing of any such "way" I concluded that no way does even exist. Now I learn there is a "way" anyway

Quote:

Originally posted by syg00
Provided there is no persistant data in swap, the enthusiastic advice offered above might hold.

An example of where it won't is Suse on a laptop, and suspend2 in use.
Nothing is ever as simple as it seems.

Thanks again!