[vox-tech] SuSE - Debian Swap Conflict

[Jeff Newmiller]

On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, Robert G. Scofield wrote:

> I'm sorry if this message gets out twice, but Kmail seems to have eaten my 
> first try.
> 
> I've got a strange error message regarding my Swap partition.  Here's the 
> background:
> 
> I have my main Linux distro, SuSE 9.2, on hdb2.  I had a duplicate copy of 
> this distro on hdb3.  I installed Debian over the duplicate on hdb3.  When 
> installing Debian, the installer would not go forward unless /dev/hdb5 was 
> formatted in addition to hdb3.  Hdb5 is my swap partition.

In my experience, the installer prompts you to proceed at each step, and
offers alternatives.  It does NOT "not go forward unless [some other
partition] is formatted".  It _does_ offer a default path forward that
formats succeeding partitions, and you may not have realized that you
did not have to follow that path.

You should be fine re-using the same swap partition from both SuSE and
Debian.

> After rebooting after the Debian install, SuSE would not boot.  I used a SuSE 
> rescue CD which fixed a FSTAB entry, and now SuSE boots.  But while using the 
> SuSE rescue CD I got an error message saying that /dev/hdb5 contains an 
> unknown file system.
>
> Everything seems to be working and I just put in the rescue CD to check once 
> more for problems.  When the rescue utility starts I get a box with this 
> message:
> 
> "Activate Swap Partition /dev/hdb5
> 
> The partition /dev/hdb5 has the file system ID 130 and contains a valid swap 
> area.  Activating this swap partition increases the performance of the repair 
> tool.  Press "Yes" to activate the swap partition."
> 
> After I press "Yes" and the repair tool continues to do its work it ultimately 
> returns this error message:  "/dev/hdb5 contains unknown file system."
> 
> While SuSE seems to be working, I haven't used it much as I'm downloading 
> Debian packages.  But I'm wondering if SuSE is activating the swap partition 
> when it boots.  I didn't realize that there was more than one swap file 
> system.  I thought swap was swap.  But note that SuSE is using reiserfs and 
> Debian is using ext3.  So here are some questions:
> 
> 1)  Will SuSE run into problems if I start doing some memory intensive work, 
> or do you think SuSE is activating swap when it boots?

It sounds like you have Debian and SuSE configured to use that partition
for different purposes.  Check your fstab file in Debian AND in SuSE.  You
may still have to reformat it for swap when you are done.

> 2)  Since SuSE is my main system and Debian is just a training tool, is there 
> some way to re-partition the swap partition in the way SuSE's reiserfs likes?

reiserfs doesn't "like" anything about other partitions... it has no
opinion on matters outside its partition.  However, fstab may be messing
you up.

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