I figure I can use an extended partition to swap, and on startup I'd
have to configure it correctly for each system (for example, for
Windows, I'd have to do a format before I could swap; for linux
I'd have to mkswap before I could swap...; for bsd ???)
I don't think you need to do anything for bsd except run swapfs ---
although you do need to make sure that particular swap partition has
been compiled into the kernel.
Actually, I have a suggestion for Linux's swapfs; there should be a -f
option which causes swapfs to do the equivalent of mkswap on the
partition first. This is obviously very dangerous, especially if the
user inputs the wrong partition; but the same could be said of what
happens if someone types the wrong partition name to mkfs or mkswap.
And Unix has always been really good at giving system administrators
lots of rope to hang themselves if they accidentally do something
stupid, in the name of providing sysadmin convenience. :-)
- Ted