dual boot multi distros

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 2:25 pm

Hi, new to the board. But have been a tllts listener for awhile.
How would you go about multi booting diffrent distros on the same physical disk. For example Suse 10.0 , Knoppmyth.

Thanks

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 5:53 pm

Create 2 partitions for each operating system, and add a swap partition for each to share. Choose to install GRUB or Lilo for whichever you install first, and then add the other OS to your menu list file. If you use GRUB, your menu.lst file should look something like this.

Code: Select all

default 0
timeout 5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title=Gentoo
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-gentoo-r1 root=/dev/hda3 init=/linuxrc ramdisk=8192 
initrd /initramfs-genkernel-x86-2.6.15-gentoo-r5

title=Debian
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-1-686 root=/dev/hdb1 ro 
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-1-686

Keep in mind I'm using 2 different disks here. Your root devices would be (hd0,0), and (hd0,1) if you're using a single drive, and that drive is the master.

Gomer_X · Post by **Gomer_X** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 9:31 am

I have at least 2 OSs on every machine I own except the laptop.

I usually have a 100 meg partition that I use for /boot that is mounted by all OSs (except Windows, of course). All distros put their kernels there, and you can have 1 grub.conf that is shared.

I use 1 root partition per distro, 1 /boot and 1 shared swap partition.

My grub.conf looks something like:

Code: Select all

default=0
timeout=7
splashimage=(hd1,1)/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title Fedora Core 3 (2.6.11-1.27_FC3)
	root (hd1,1)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.27_FC3 ro root=/dev/hda3
	initrd /initrd-2.6.11-1.27_FC3.img

title OpensusE 19 (2.8.91-1.2034_OS19)
	root (hd1,1)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.8.91-1.2034_OS19 ro root=/dev/hdb2
	initrd /initrd-2.8.91-1.2034_OS19.img

title WinXP
	rootnoverify (hd0,0)
	chainloader +1

Note that my root() line is the same between the 2 Linux distros because they use the same boot partition (hd1,1 = /dev/hdb2 = /boot).

The root partitions are specified on the kernel lines (Fedora Core 3 is on /dev/hda3, OpensusE 19 is on /dev/hdb2). Grub doesn't care where the root partitions are, it just loads the kernel, and the kernel mounts the root partition.

This is just one way of doing it. Grub is installed in the MBR.