Hello,
It is possible to share swap partitions, and there is no problem in doing it.
On the other hand, if you share your home partition across different distributions you might end with unstable systems and weird problems, as most distros have different versions of the programs you have installed.
The best way to access another distribution files is to mount those partitions under some other directory, something like this:
1st: Check and write down (in paper) the partitions you want to mount, do this by looking in every
/etc/fstab of every distro. You should look for a line like this one:
Code:
/dev/hdb5 /home reiserfs defaults 0 0
(Thats my home, check your hdXY part)
2nd: Once you have all the
/dev/hdXY (with X being a letter: a, b... and Y being a number: 1, 2, 3...) written down, that is, all the homes you want to mount, restart to the first system you want to mount the other partitions in.
Now, create the mount points (directories, as root):
Code:
]# mkdir /mnt/1st-distro-name
]# mkdir /mnt/2nd-distro-name
And so on for each home you want of each distro.
Then mount it manually:
Code:
]# mount /dev/hdXY /mnt/1st-distro-name
...
Repeat changing as needed until you mounted all the partitions.
If you want to do this at system startup, you should copy and paste the line where you mount your HOME (as i showed mine above), and change the mount point and the partition accordingly.
Hope this can help!