RE: Linux Multi-Boot

Many thanks to all that offered suggestions. I finally got my quadro-boot
system up and running the way I wanted it.

It took installing Mandrake10 first, RH8 second and Xandros 2.0 third to
get'r'done. I think Xandros is using LILO to boot everything, but tonight I
really don't care...it works!

Tomorrow I'll start to worry about the "how and why" of it. Mostly, I'd just
be happy with having only Xandros because IT'S SO SWEET! Everything is
working, Xandros even had a driver out of the box to get my sorry-ass
winmodem in the game.

Obviously, I'm very impressed with Xandros 2.0, only I'd like to change the
initial runlevel to text-based rather than graphical. What do I need to do?
Edit the inittab file to boot into runlevel 3? I'll figure it out tomorrow,
I'm in my M$ XP install right now.

Mainly, I'd just like to say that this is a great group and I want to learn
more and contribute more. I'd like to make one of your meetings, but with my
work schedule (11-7:30pm) I'd end up being late. On the up-side I live right
at Horne and Main so the eastside meetings are right down the street.

Would anyone object terribly to a newcomer showing up a half-hour or so
late? It's no disrespect, just work constraints is all. I'd really like to
meet some of you in person and be more of a contributor for the group.
Thanks a 11110100001001000000!!!

-S

-----Original Message-----
From: plug-discuss-admin@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-admin@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us]On Behalf Of Vaughn
Treude
Sent: Friday, April 23, 2004 1:01 PM
To: plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
Subject: Re: Linux Multi-Boot


On Saturday 24 April 2004 01:09, you wrote:
> I divided the drive into three primary partitions and installed Xandros on
> the first one. Then I tried to install Mandrake on the second partition,
> but it saw the first '/' mount point and wanted to use that. I set another
> '/' mount point up on the second partition and installed Mandrake to that
> one, but got errors saying I had duplicate mount points. After the install
> Mandrake wouldn't boot and I think it was trying to mount the first
Xandros
> '/' and expecting Mandrake to be there. Kernel panic and freeze.
>

I've done this a dozen times or so, but YMMV...

I always select the manual disk partition option (I assume you're already
doing this) insteads of letting the installer assign things automatically.
Tools like Disk Druid and cfdisk are pretty easy to use. When I install
the
second OS, if the installer has assigned the first partition as "/" I just
edit that entry it and remove the mount point. Then I create the second
partition and assign it as "/" for the second OS - and so on, for each one.
I could use this as an opportunity to set up a "/mandrake" or "/redhat" or
"/knoppix" partition (or whatever) for the earlier distros, but I don't
really trust the installers - I do that manually through the fstab file
after
the fact. I figure I'll have to do that anyway with all but the last one,
because when you create the first partition, none of the others exist. As
far as the swap partition, that's the one case where you can use the same
one
for every distro.

As for partitioning, a lot of folks recommend that you make separate "/" and
"/home" partitions, which makes upgrading easier and safer down the road.
When doing multi-boot, though, I think that's too much of a pain, so I just
let the installer but the "/home" directory in with everything else. You
could, if you wanted, create a single "/home" partition, and reuse it with
all distros, provided you change your non-root user name - such as steve1,
steve2, etc. (I find this approch a little too hard to remember.) Another
consideration is that this partition be readable by all of the distros, so
if
you have an old one in the list, make it "ext2" just in case it doesn't like
"ext3" or "reiserfs."

My main experience is with lilo, but I think grub is even simpler - I just
use lilo out of laziness. I choose "lilo" for the first distro and "no
bootloader" for all the others. After I install all the distros, I boot
into
the first distro again modify the "/etc/fstab" file to add an entry for each
of the distros, and also add a mount directory. (That was an early
mistake -
assuming the system would create "/mandrake" for me automatically. :-))
Then
I manually mount the other distro partitions Then I save the original
lilo.conf as lilo.conf.orig, and merge them all together into a new
lilo.conf, removing anything redundnat. Of course I change the entry labels
from "linux" to the distro in question, and any directory references such as
"/boot" become /distro/boot" (except for the first distro, of course.) Then
I run "lilo -t" as a test. When test mode runs without complaint, I run
just
plain "lilo" which updates the boot menu. It's a bit of a pain, but it
works
for me.

Vaughn

> After that I reinstalled Mandrake and this time named the second mount
> point '/mandrake'. I didn't really think that would work (and didn't), but
> I tried anyway. My drive is set up with three primary partitions, first
> formatted with reiserfs (the Xandros install) and the second and third are
> ext3. I would like to use Grub to control everything, but I think that
> Xandros had put it's own version of LILO in the mbr of my primary master.
>
> I'm thinking that I'm not setting up the partition table correctly in the
> first place or that I'm not formatting the partitions right. For Xandros,
I
> just set up a '/' mount point and the installation created the entire
linux
> directory for me under that. Also, it formatted the partition to reiserfs.
> I was hoping that Mandrake would do the same for me under the second
> partition and that I could use Grub to select which one to boot to. Maybe
I
> need to explicitly create the entire partition directory for Mandrake. But
> that still doesn't fix my problem of what to name the second primary
> partition to avoid having duplicate mount points.
>
> Any help is really appreciated and I'll be googling around and
> experimenting some more in the meantime. After all, this is a learning
> experience for me and that was really the whole idea of doing this.
>
> Thx,
>
> Steve
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: plug-discuss-admin@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> [mailto:plug-discuss-admin@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us]On Behalf Of Bart
> Garst
> Sent: Friday, April 23, 2004 6:50 AM
> To: plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> Subject: RE: Linux Multi-Boot
>
> > I've got a 60 gig drive (secondary master) that I split equally three
> > ways with the partioning utility that Xandros uses. I would like to
> > install Xandros 2.0 on one part, Mandrake 10.0 on another and RH8 on the
> > third. I've
> > also got a separate drive (primary master) that's laden with XP Pro. For
> > now, that's my main install.
> >
> > My question is, basically, what's the best way to get three linux
distros
> > installed on one hdd? And still be able to access my XP drive.
> > I've tried a
> > couple of ways, but haven't had any luck. TIA for any help any of
> > you might
> > be able to offer.
>
> Could you provide some more details? More specifically, what did you try
> and how did it not work?
>
> What you want is possible, and it shouldn't be too difficult to
accomplish.
>
> Bart
>
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