On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 7:29 AM, Richard Owlett <rowl...@cloud85.net> wrote: > > What's even more annoying (ascetically) is that I can not see a way for > multiple simultaneous installs to use the same swap space. After all, only > only one install will be in use at a time.
This stood out to me reading this thread. While I may be missing some background (I could't find any in the thread), multiple simultaneous installs using the same swap space refers to having multiple Linux installs simultaneously on a machine all referencing the same disk partition for their swap space. It does not refer to them all *running* at the same time which is, of course, impossible. For example, say swap is /dev/sda6 (reasonable, it's the first logical partition), and you have 3 different Linux installs, say Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora, then all 3 of these will reference /dev/sda6 as their swap partition. Since swap is "scratch space" the content of it only matters while it's actively in use. Once the operating system has shut down, it can be mounted by any other booted Linux installation and used as swap. If you boot Ubuntu, /dev/sda6 will be used as swap. You then shut down Ubuntu and boot Debian, Ubuntu releases /dev/sda6 as it's shutting down and Debian mounts it as it's starting up. Debian is now using /dev/sda6 as its swap partition. The same happens when you shut down Debian and boot Fedora. If I'm missing what the issue is, forgive me, but this is the answer to what I *think* your question is. :-) -- Chris -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/CAOEVnYv=oinuvoymtw2zgomabyzvjshn+wh4bveqmw2m6fv...@mail.gmail.com
