Installing ubuntu 16.04 LTS about swap
How avoid reformatting others swap partitions?
I have a lot of distro in my hard drive:
- Windows10
- Ubuntu16.10
- Antergos[ Arch Linux]
- Fedora25
- free space
- Data
All Linux distros have swap partitions (16GiB each one).
In the free space first I created a swap partition of 16 GiB and the rest of size is for root partition(ext4).
- /dev/sda13
- /dev/sda14
It is odd that we can't select the swap partitions, anyway click in "install now" button
I do not want to reformat those Linux' swap, How avoid that?
hard drive : 2 TiB MBR
Output of fdisk -l
ubuntu-gnome@ubuntu-gnome:~$ sudo fdisk -l
Disk /dev/ram0: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk /dev/ram1: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk /dev/ram2: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk /dev/ram3: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk /dev/ram4: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk /dev/ram5: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk /dev/ram6: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk /dev/ram7: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk /dev/ram8: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk /dev/ram9: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk /dev/ram10: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk /dev/ram11: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk /dev/ram12: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk /dev/ram13: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk /dev/ram14: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk /dev/ram15: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk /dev/loop0: 1.2 GiB, 1246838784 bytes, 2435232 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk /dev/sda: 1.8 TiB, 2000398934016 bytes, 3907029168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xaaf06e0e
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 2048 1026047 1024000 500M 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 1026048 525314047 524288000 250G 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 525316094 3907028991 3381712898 1.6T f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 2644512768 3907028991 1262516224 602G 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda6 525316096 557314047 31997952 15.3G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7 557316096 1057314815 499998720 238.4G 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 1057314817 1058291377 976561 476.9M 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 1058291379 1090291377 31999999 15.3G 83 Linux
/dev/sda10 1090291379 1590291377 499999999 238.4G 83 Linux
/dev/sda11 * 1590294528 2114582527 524288000 250G 83 Linux
/dev/sda12 2114584576 2148139007 33554432 16G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
Partition 3 does not start on physical sector boundary.
Partition 8 does not start on physical sector boundary.
Partition 9 does not start on physical sector boundary.
Partition 10 does not start on physical sector boundary.
Partition table entries are not in disk order.
Disk /dev/sdb: 7.2 GiB, 7742685184 bytes, 15122432 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x178e5ca0
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1 * 0 2538431 2538432 1.2G 0 Empty
/dev/sdb2 2511036 2515771 4736 2.3M ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)
ubuntu-gnome@ubuntu-gnome:~$
Solution 1:
You don't need different swap partitions for different systems, the same way you don't need different RAM sticks for different systems. Just share one between all of them. You should use the left-most one because it's the one with the fastest read/write speed (on a HDD).
The only time something relevant after a shutdown is still on the swap is when you hibernate your PC (suspend to disk). But that's disabled by default, anyway.
Don't care about them getting formatted. If no system is suspended to disk (and only if a swap partition is used to hold the suspension image which isn't necessarily the case), it doesn't change anything.
Formatting a swap partition is a problem if it's auto-mounted using its UUID. To check whether that's the case, open the /etc/fstab files of your systems. If there is a line containing the word "swap" which starts with UUID=, the UUID has to be exchanged by the new one. Note that there doesn't have to be such a line. Your swap partitions can be identified by their device name. In this case, the line starts for example with /dev/sda12 and nothing has to be done – except if you deleted the partition or it's now a partition of a different kind, in which case the device name has to be changed.
If you deleted all but one swap partition, write the same UUID into the respective line of the /etc/fstab of all of your Linux systems. This can be done either in the live session or in the systems themselves. The change will take effect after you boot the next time. If the UUID changed, the swap partition will not be mounted but apart from there being no swap partition, the system can be used normally.