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Echogene
Asked: 2011-09-01 14:24:18 +0800 CST

Two Ubuntu partitions with different swap partitions

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I have installed two Ubuntu partitions and they appear to be using two different swap partitions. Is this a safety thing or is it a waste of space? If the latter, how do I set up one Ubuntu to use the other's swap partition?

partitioning

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    It's a waste of space - when installing the second Ubuntu you could've just pointed it to the existing swap partition. Actually, I even think the installer automatically configures an existing swap partition to be used if it can find one.

    To fix the situation (well, if you consider it a problem), you need to open /etc/fstab file of one of the ubuntus, locate the line which mentions "swap" and change the device name (or partition UUID) there.

    The line would look something like

    # /dev/sda2
UUID=69222dd6-31ea-488e-a4c1-8f5a5fbba098 none            swap    sw              0       0

    so you can change it to

    /dev/sdb5 none            swap    sw              0       0

    or, even better, find the UUID of the swap partition and use it instead:

    sudo blkid /dev/sdb5
/dev/sdb5: LABEL="SWAP-sdb5" UUID="69222dd6-31ea-488e-a4c1-8f5a5faac456" TYPE="swap"
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