Dual boot, Linux-Linux, no windows, fstab?

itsjustme · 11-23-2003, 10:22 AM

I'm thinking about putting Red Hat 9 on some free space I have on a hard drive that currently has SuSE 8.2 Pro on it. (Just for fun, if you want to know.

) I'm using reiserfs on the SuSE partitions, so I assume that I'll need to do that with the Red Hat partitions to share the /boot partition. And, just because, why not... Also, I'm just going with the basic partitions, / , /boot, and swap. And, I assume I can share the swap that is already there, so I don't need to create another swap partition specifically for the Red Hat install.

Anyway, if you have a similar setup with 2 Linux distros on one hard drive (hda), could you post up your /etc/fstab. I'm just curious how others have it setup.

I did a quick search here for a similar situation, but most of what I found was Linux-Windows.

Thanks...

acid_kewpie · 11-23-2003, 10:30 AM

how you arrange it is going to be controlled by the spare space you have... there is no real benefit from any particular physical layout, and that would not be relfected in any fstab file either though... you wouldn't have any need to access the root partition of both distros at once..... and you can use whatever file system you want though, ext3, jfs, reiserfs...

itsjustme · 11-23-2003, 11:06 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by acid_kewpie

- how you arrange it is going to be controlled by the spare space you have
- you wouldn't have any need to access the root partition of both distros at once
- and you can use whatever file system you want though, ext3, jfs, reiserfs...

It's a little over 10Gig of space, so that's not an issue.
I understand I won't be sharing the root partition, I was asking about the /boot partition.
That's what brought up the question of reiserfs for Red Hat.

So, since I already have a swap and a /boot with the SuSE system, then at the partitioning portion of the Red Hat install (where that machine sits right now), I reckon all I need to add is the root partition, / , at the next mount point, /dev/hda5, for Red Hat.

Here's basically the current setup on that machine:
/dev/hda1 - swap ------ 643MB
/dev/hda2 - reiserfs ---- 100MB - /boot
/dev/hda3 - reiserfs ---10245MB - /
/dev/hda4 - reiserfs ----5122MB - /uh-can't-recall-off-hand

free---------------------13210MB

So, after I install Red Hat, looks like the only other thing I'll have in there is another primary partition:
/dev/hda5 - reiserfs----whateversizeIchoosehere - /

Thanks...

itsjustme · 11-23-2003, 01:03 PM

The operative phrase:

Quote:

... then at the partitioning portion of the Red Hat install (where that machine sits right now) ...

acid_kewpie · 11-23-2003, 01:08 PM

well if that really is the layout of your drive, then sadly you're a bit screwed... you can only have 4 primary partitions (including extended partitions) so you will be unable to allocate that free space.

itsjustme · 11-23-2003, 01:18 PM

D'OH !! I didn't think of that until I went ahead and tried the extra / partition for red hat and got a 'could not allocate' error. I'm rebooting now to see what I did with /dev/hda4.

Also, in the RH9 install, reiserfs is not an option for a new partition.

Fortunately, I'm just screwing around with this for the learning. I can reformat the drive and start over.

Thanks...

clangen · 11-23-2003, 05:27 PM

Well, you're probably in trouble... You will have to delete one of the 4 existing partitions, in order to create an extended partition to be able to create logical partitions... As a suggestion I would move everythin on Partition 4 to Partition 3; delete partition 4, add a new partition (extended) and then create as many logical partitions as needed..

itsjustme · 11-23-2003, 07:20 PM

Well... I'm having fun now!!

On the SuSE system I had /usr mounted to /dev/hda4 so I mkdir'ed a /usr_hold then I tarred up /usr and moved that tar file to /usr_hold.
Then I went back to the Red Hat 9 install and when I got to the partitioning part, I deleted the /dev/hda4 partition and finished the install with Red Hat's / at /dev/hda4.

Now, I need to find a way to get back onto the SuSE pattition to recreate the /usr directory because trying to boot into SuSE from grub now gives me a rootnoverify message.

Is there a way to do manipulate the SuSE filesystem from within Red Hat to untar that usr.tar into a new /usr directory? Hmmm.. I suppose I could just manually mount /dev/hda3, eh?
I don't have a SuSE boot disk. I don't recall an option to create one when I installed it.

This is no emergency. I can reformat if I need to. It's just an exercise.

Here's fdisk -l, fstab, mount, and /proc/partitions as seen from Red Hat:

Code:

[root@localhost proc]# fdisk -l
 
Disk /dev/hda: 30.7 GB, 30750031872 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3738 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
 
   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1             1        82    658633+  82  Linux swap
/dev/hda2   *        83        95    104422+  83  Linux
/dev/hda3            96      1401  10490445   83  Linux
/dev/hda4          1402      3738  18771952+  83  Linux

[root@localhost proc]# cat /etc/fstab
LABEL=/                 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
none                    /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
none                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
/dev/hda1               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/cdrom              /mnt/cdrom              udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0                /mnt/floppy             auto    noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0

[root@localhost proc]# mount
/dev/hda4 on / type ext3 (rw)
none on /proc type proc (rw)
usbdevfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbdevfs (rw)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)

[root@localhost proc]# cat /proc/partitions
major minor  #blocks  name     rio rmerge rsect ruse wio wmerge wsect wuse running use aveq
 
   3     0   30029328 hda 11199 22415 267442 70400 3040 7232 82376 123590 -7 2121230 28552052
   3     1     658633 hda1 13 41 168 90 0 0 0 0 0 90 90
   3     2     104422 hda2 13 71 168 70 0 0 0 0 0 70 70
   3     3   10490445 hda3 13 71 168 110 0 0 0 0 0 110 110
   3     4   18771952 hda4 11156 22208 266882 70100 3040 7232 82376 123590 0 58280 194410

Thanks...

itsjustme · 11-24-2003, 08:58 PM

Oh well.... I screwed it up. So I reformatted.
Now that I am thinking about the dual boot thing, I'll do the partitions differently.

What I did was... I mounted /dev/hda3 to a directory I created called /shared in the red hat system. In there was the /usr directory from suse, which was now defunct after the repartitioning. So I was going to delete that and recreate it with the tar file in /usr_hold. But.... When I went to delete it, I was in /shared, but I ran 'rm -rf /usr . oops!! Bye Bye /usr for red hat!