write state to swap for multi-os boot

[Eric Kjeldergaard]

> > Has anyone considered or accomplished allowing FreeBSD to write it's
> > current state (including window manager, windows, etc) to swap and
> > allowing a subsequent reload of the system to last state? This would be
> > sort of like the sleep mode of a laptop, but would allow the user to boot
> > into another OS (like Winblows) briefly and then resume their FreeBSD
> > system state. I'd love to use FreeBSD as my primary desktop, but there may
> > be times where I'll need to boot into Windows for apps that don't run
> > under Wine. Since I tend to have a lot of application windows open, it's a
> > PITA to have to reload everything on boot. Thoughts?
> 
> This isn't a direct answer to your question, but you might want to have
> a look at vmware.
> 

vmware and qemu (open source semi-alternative) are good ways to
accomplish booting Windows from inside of FreeBSD.  What you want,
however, is something that has been on the wishlist for a little while
now.  Suspend-to-RAM has been around and works fine for a while, but
Suspend-to-disc (which Linux currently has) is yet to be written. 
There have been suggestions of saving the RAM to swap space and
shutting down.  I hope to see someone put this into action soon.  It'd
be a great feature.  (Especially for mobiles)

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