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Date:      Sun, 17 Nov 1996 06:36:29 +1100
From:      Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
To:        freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org, j@uriah.heep.sax.de
Cc:        rhh@ct.picker.com
Subject:   Re: Sharing SWAP between FreeBSD versions
Message-ID:  <199611161936.GAA25929@godzilla.zeta.org.au>

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>>       I'm fixing to repartition my disks and wondering if I can share my
>> 32M swap between any two FreeBSD versions I might have installed at the
>> same time.  Anybody know?
>
>You gotta put it into a slice of its own.  You'll run into more
>problems with booting different FreeBSD versions however.

A separate slice is only necessary if you want more than 6 mountable
partitions altogether.  You only need 2 more for the second version
of FreeBSD, e.g.,

	a: version 1 root
	b: swap
	c: special
	d: spare
	e: version 1 usr
	f: spare
	g: version 2 root
	h: version 2 usr

>>       A related questions is, is swap a "raw" partition in the sense that
>> FreeBSD doesn't rely on it having any structure to use it?

Yes.

>The slice needs a disklabel, and a `b' partition therein.

Nope.  After `swapon /dev/wd0s4' (a spare partition), swapinfo says:

Device      1024-blocks     Used    Avail Capacity  Type
/dev/sd0b         65536     8216    57256    13%    Interleaved
/dev/wd0s4       687456        0   687392     0%    Interleaved
Total            752864     8216   744648     1%

The slice happens to be labelled, but I don't think this is important,
and it doesn't have a 'b' partition.  disklabel says:

# /dev/rwd0s4:
...
8 partitions:
#        size   offset    fstype   [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
  c:  1374912        0    unused        0     0       	# (Cyl.    0 - 340)

Bruce



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