Issue about Swap Partition

[kalyankumar]

I had Installed two other linux distros along with garuda linux in my laptop.I had allocated seperate swap partition to each distro during installation.I had no problem with other distros.But in case of garuda linux,free -h command showing ,swap partition size is the total of all swap partitions combined which are allocated to other distros also.what to do to ,to stop garuda from not using other swap partition of other distros.

[Bro]

• What you see are the (virtual) ZRAM drives. Don't be alarmed.
• If you want to use your other existing SWAP partition, you'll need to mount it and add it to /etc/fstab. Unless you had the Garuda installer delete the partition you installed it to with the option of a swap. In that case you can still mount your existing in fstab if you wish.

[Naman]

Wait. Why would you need different swap partitions?

Imagine that you 2× 8GB RAM sticks, and you want different distro to use different sticks?

I guess you should first read more about SWAP here,
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Swap

Or am I misunderstanding you

[kalyankumar]

I don't know whether same swap partition can be used for different distros.I assigned swap partition to each distribution during installation.My doubt is that if garuda uses other swap partitions,is there any problem.what to do,if I want different distro to use use different sticks.I will go through article.

[Bro]

Any Linux distribution (AFAIK) can use another's swap partition (assuming it's formatted linuxswap). You can only use one distribution at a time, right?

Notice I put in the qualifiers.

[Naman]

@kalyankumar

I don’t know whether same swap partition can be used for different distros.

Yes.

@kalyankumar

My doubt is that if garuda uses other swap partitions,is there any problem.

No.

@kalyankumar

what to do

Merge the swap partitions into one.

[SameExpert]

What if, one (maybe OP) hibernates one distro, then use another, then wants to resume the hibernated one? It’s not someone would really want to do, but in very rare case someone may want.

Asking this just out of curiosity just to understand.

@Bro

Any Linux distribution (AFAIK) can use another’s swap partition (assuming it’s formatted linuxswap).

Only if mounted, maybe in fstab, right?

@Naman

Merge the swap partitions into one.

Having too much (doubled/thrippled) of swap would be waste, maybe better to have one and use the rest for storage.

[Bro]

@SameExpert

Only if mounted, maybe in fstab, right?

Unless you want to manually mount it, yes.