swap partition problem on install

[11evele]

i'm using woody cd install....i have one 12 gig drive as hda with xandros and suse. i'm installing debian on my 40 gig hdb but when it asks for swap partition it automatically associates it with hda1 with no other choice. i chose no swap and when i get to linux partition it shows hda1, hdb1 and hdb5, b5 is were i wanted the debian swap. i put debian on hdb1 and i'm going through with the no swap install to see what happens but once i am in debian can i create a swap? thanks guys, sorry for this debian newbie question...any help would be greatly appreciated!

[lacek]

The chices offered are the swap partitions which are already exist on the disk at the time the installer wants you to choose one.
So, if there is a Linux swap partition, you may choose only this one, and the installer probably doesn't create any more swap spaces.
There are a few things about the swap space you need to know:
- Swap space can be 'shared' between Linux distributions. Since swap space contains nothing but memory contents, there is no need to worry about it.
- You can create swap space later. You have two options here: make a swap to a partition (which is recommended), or create a swap file (like Windows do).
Using a swap file is somewhat slower. Here is how to do swap:
If you use a file, you'll need to create the swap file:

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dd if=/dev/zero of=/var/swap bs=1024k count=256

Be sure not to put your swapfile to /tmp, to /var/tmp, or to /var/run/ because these locations erased at system startup.

If the file (or the partition) is ready, you need to create a swap:

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mkswap <swapfile|/dev/partition>

If it is done, insert a line to /etc/fstab like this:

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<swapfile|partition>       none            swap    sw