[PLUG] LILO and installing multiple distributions

[Shannon C. Dealy]

On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, Jason Dagit wrote:

[snip]
> > > 3. Just to make sure, may I use the same partition (mount point) for
> > > swap space I have allocatated under slackware for redhat?
> >
> > Swap partition formats are pretty generic and while there have been a few
> > minor format changes over the years, I believe the new kernels can handle
> > all the old format variations, so as long as both distributions are
> > running roughly comparable kernel revisions (both from the same major
> > revision number), or the distribution that was used to format the swap
> > partition uses an older kernel version than the other distribution, you
> > shouldn't have any problems sharing it between them.
>
> My understanding was that it is basically just a partion of the disk you
> don't care about, and that the data is not kept between uses of the OS.
> So even if they had different formats they could just reinitialize the
> partion when they boot up (in the worst case).  But I may have missed
> something.

You are correct, the swap partition contents are irrelevant once you
reboot, though it hadn't occurred to me to just reformat it on reboot
if there are compatibility issues, not sure if this is a good or bad
idea, but it would certainly work.

Shannon C. Dealy      |               DeaTech Research Inc.
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