Will shared swap bite me?

[Chuck Anderson]

On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 06:06:35PM -0400, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> I have to set up a machine as dual boot 32/64 bit and I would really love 
> to not waste space on swap partitions being duplicated if I don't have 
> to. That said, if I do two installs and use the same swap partition, what 
> evil will come of it?

No problems.  I do it all the time when testing/switching between 
different Fedora releases.

> The only obvious issue I see is suspending the non-default kernel and 
> trying to boot the other (found that in FC6) and I can avoid that. Any 
> other know issues I have to avoid?

Yeah, you definately don't want to hibernate to swap on one OS and try 
to boot the other.  You'll just lose your hibernated system and leave 
the filesystems in inconsistent state.  In general it is very bad to 
boot /anything/ other that the original hibernated kernel when after 
you have hibernated.  That's why grub doesn't show you a menu when you 
boot up in a hibernated state.

> The object is to run one 64 bit program without reinstalling the whole 
> stable 32 bit environment.

Why not go all 64-bit?  I've been using it, and have had zero issues 
with 32/64 bit compatibility.