swap space

[Liam Proven]

On 19/12/2007, Michael.Coll-Barth at verizonwireless.com
<Michael.Coll-Barth at verizonwireless.com> wrote:
> All,
>
> I am in the process of building a new machine that will have several
> different OSes installed for different purposes.  WIN XP, Ubuntu 7.10
> and Fedora 8 are already installed and working with at least two other
> flavors of Linux coming.  Only one OS will be booted at any given time,
> no VM Ware here...
>
> The question of the day; can I safely have a single swap space that is
> shared by the different flavors of Linux?  Do I need to do anything
> special to the space and or settings of the OS to do this?

I do this routinely. I have shared a single swap partition between at
least 2 or 3 of the following on at least 3 of my machines:
* Ubuntu 4/5/6/7
* Xandros 2/3/4
* SuSE 9/10
* Mandriva 9/10/2007
... and more besides. I review and write about software for a living,
amongst other things. Most of my PCs boot into at least 2 different
distros: that way, if one gets screwed up, I can use a different one
to fix it.

However, the caveat you've been given applies: *do not* use
hibernation if several distros share a single swap partition. If you
restart a different distro, Bad Things would be very likely to happen
and might destroy both distros.

That one caveat aside, you should be fine.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
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