Hey all. I have an odd situation.

I'm wanting to "share" swap space between FreeBSD 5.1, Red Hat 8.0, and Debian Woody. I read the HOW-TO on tldp.org, but it's not quite sinking in.



I put a diagram together in PNG format describing my desired setup.. If anybody would like to see a copy of it, shoot me an e-mail and I'll send it to you. Is a setup like this possible?

I'm also having a little difficulty figuring out how I'm going to configure GRUB to be able to handle this. I've read documentation on this, too, but I'm still having some trouble grasping the new terminologies.



Thank you all.

On my computer I use the same swap partion for all versions of Linux that I have installed on this computer. Each time I add another version of Linux the installation program detects the existing swap partition and asks if it ok to reformat and re-use it. I always say yes and being reformated does not seem to bother the other versions of Linux that have already been installed. On this computer RH 9, RH 7.3 and SuSE 8.2 all share the same swap partition.

I do not know much about FreeBSD and am not sure it uses a swap partition or not. Assuming that it does, I have no idea if they could use the same swap partition as Linux.

I used one of the logical partitions which were created within an extended partition as my swap partition. It is only possible to create 4 primary partitions per harddrive. On each harddrive I created one of the primary partitions as a large extended partition. Within the extended partition I have created as many logical partitions as necessary. The swap partiton could be either a primary or logical partition but I prefer to use a logical partition as my swap partition. Not everyone agrees on how best to organize their partitions.

I will not comment on configuring grub because I use System Commander which in turn loads a seperate copy of LILO or whatever bootloader Linux or each operating system uses. I am doing it a way that is not the most common way, so I will not comment much on that. While running the installation program I chose the option of booting from the boot sector of the root partition instead of using the master boot record. I only let System Commander boot from the MBR and have it call LILO and let it boot from the root sector of the Linux boot partiton. When using multiple versions of Linux I end up with several LILO or Grub boot loaders. That seems a little messy and unelegant but it works and I have always done it that way. I belive that is called chain-loading. I am not sure if I should recommend using System Commander and doing it that way of doing things to other or not? Perhaps I have not answered you question, but I am not sure of those details when doing it with just one copy of LILO or Grub. I should add there are many things I about Linux I have not yet learned.