Re: Multiple distros

[Bruce Damkoehler <bfdamkoehler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bruce Smith wrote:
> 
> > I was looking for SCSI hard drives on Pricewatch and I noticed that
> > seagate has a rather overwhelming 47 GB Monster drive...
> 
> Wow!  What's that cost?
> 
> > I couldn't imagine every filling this up with Linux, so I thought it
> > would be cool to get a sufficiently large drive and install multiple
> > distributions (and leave some partitions open for more distros).
> >
> > The question is this: is it possible to put a nice little swap partition
> > in the middle of the drive and have all the distros share this?  I don't
> > see why not, but I thought I'd ask some people with more knowledge than
> > myself.
> 
> I've shared swap partitions between distributions before.
> 
> The only thing I'm not sure of, is if the 2.0 kernels use the
> same swap partition format as the 2.2 kernels.  I *think* they do.
> 
> In any case, you could hack each distribution and add a "mkswap"
> command before the "swapon" line.  That would reformat it every time.
> Just be careful if you ever re-partition, you could be formatting the
> wrong partition by mistake!   :{)
> 
> > This would be a great way to demo different distributions.  With a drive
> > that big you could demo installations as well...
> 
> You might have trouble making a drive that large boot partitions past
> the 8GB limit.  I know lilo gives me warnings about my 9GB SCSI disk.
> I've never tried putting a boot partition past the 8GB limit, but I
> wouldn't be surprised if that caused problems.
> 
> The other thing to be careful of is HEAT.  I know some of the early 23GB
> SCSI drives came with warnings about not install them into normal PC's.
> "WARNING:  This drive could MELT your PC!"   :{)
> 
> --------------------------------------------
> Bruce Smith                bruce@armintl.com
> System Administrator / Network Administrator
> Armstrong International, Inc.
> Three Rivers, Michigan  49093  USA
> http://www.armstrong-intl.com/
> --------------------------------------------

I share swap partitions all the time between 2.0.x and 2.2.x kernels all
the time without doing to initialize it.