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christianbueno.1
Asked: 2016-12-05 07:53:07 +0800 CST

Installing ubuntu 16.04 LTS about swap

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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 enter image description here

enter image description here

It is odd that we can't select the swap partitions, anyway click in "install now" button

enter image description here

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:~$

dual-boot

1 Answers

  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.

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