dual boot Redhat and Suse
 

I already have redhat 9 installed, but wanted to try another distor. Is it possible to install suse after the fact as a dual boot?

Yes, but you'll have to make a decision over which boot loader you want to use. The easiest thing would be to just click 'ok' and let Suse overwrite Grub - it'll almost certainly add an entry for Redhat. If not, just go in to the settings in Yast and add one.

Or, if you're fond of the Redhat boot loader, click 'no' when Suse asks if you'd like a Grub/Lilo entry written, and then afterwards go into the Redhat config gui/textfile and add an entry for Suse.

Either way will work.

Thanks for the reply,

I started the process then stoped because I was having trouble understanding what I was looking at with the partitioning part of the install. How should I go through thte partitioning section? Do I tell it not to partition the drives, and then tell it where to install? Thanks again for the help.

Do you have any free space available on your drives, or does Redhat take it all up ?

If you have some free space, just get Suse to partition and format as much of the free space as you wish to use, and carry on as normal. You should see both the existing partitions for Redhat (probably hda1, hda2, formated as ext3 and swap etc. - Don't change these ones). You may have to experiment a little with the options.

If you don't have any free space on your drive, you'll either need to resize the existing partitions (depending on what they're formatted as, this could be either trivial or a bit annoying), or beg/borrow/buy another drive to use.

Good luck :)

I can definitely find some room on one of the partitions. I could move the stuff on the hda5 partition and use that entire space. How does the partition then look? Does hda5 then have a root partition and a swap? Also how does this work with the boot paritition. I am showing my ignorance of partitions now, but does the boot partition just have the boot loader? I appreciate your help so i don't re-format my drive.

Depends a bit on where you've put your boot loader, but the simplest configuration would just to have one (bootable) root parition for Suse, eg. hda5, and use the existing swap partition for both Redhat and Suse.

If in doubt, you may want to back anything important up, but personally I've never lost anything when installing a multiboot setup.

I managed to get everything installed and it looks like I didn't erase anything, which is good, but now I am having boot loader troubles. My previous instillation was RedHat 9, and I just installed Suse 9.1. I am using the grub boot loader, which resides in the /boot/grub on the suse's partitions. I couldn't get them both to share the same root for some reason. I may re-install and try that later. But anyway, here is my menu.1st file:

# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Tue Dec 7 02:13:11 2004


color white/blue black/light-gray
default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd0,4)/boot/message

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title Suse
kernel (hd0,4)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda5 vga=0x314 splash=silent desktop resume=/dev/hda3 showopts
initrd (hd0,4)/boot/initrd

##RedHat##
title RedHat
kernel (hd0,0)/vmlinux-2.4.20-8 root=/dev/hda1 hdc=ide=scsi
##ro root=LABEL=/ hdc=ide=scsi
initrd (hd0,0)/initrd-2.4.20-8.img

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: floppy###
title Floppy
root (fd0)
chainloader +1

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe
kernel (hd0,4)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda5 showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off vga=normal noresume nosmp noapic maxcpus=0 3
initrd (hd0,4)/boot/initrd

As you can see the first loader menu is the Suse, which works fine. The second is my writing for Redhat. I get the error (Error 13: not an executable). I have mounted and looked at /vmlin** on my /dev/hda1, and it is there.

Any suggestions?

Just to check, but it is definitely meant to be vmlinux-2.4.20-8 and not vmlinuz, in your Redhat entry ?

/vmlinuz (or /vmlinuz-x.y.z) are usually just a symbolic links to the current kernel in /boot/vmlinux-x.y.z.i686

That seemed to fix it, just a syntax error, but now I get:

kernel panic: no init found
try passing init= option to kernel

When I look at my files, I see the initrd-kernelVersion.img, but no initrd file. Is this the problem? Did it somehow get deleted when installing Suse?

If so how can I create this file. If not how can I rescue this?

Check whether your initrd is in fact at /. At a guess, I'd say it's more likely to be in /boot. If this is the case, then change the Redhat line

initrd (hd0,0)/initrd-2.4.20-8.img

to:

initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd-2.4.20-8.img

Cheers,

mj

it doesn't seem to have the problem finding initrd.....img because when I change it to /boot/initrd...img it says can't find the file. So it must have something to do with either initrd as a file itself, which I can't find anywhere, or something else. I am going to try to copy the initrd file from suse's boot mount. If you have any thoughts, thanks.

That wasn't a good idea. When I went to copy the initrd file I noticed that it is just a symbolic link to the initrd... file in there. So it must be something else.

a) Check that /sbin/init exists.
b) Check that there is an /initrd directory on both hda1 and hda5.

Thanks, it turns out that I needed to tell the kernel root=/dev/hda2.

I now get it to start for the most part, but to install suse I had to repartition and reformat /dev/hda5, so now on start-up it tries to mount /dev/hda5, but gives me a bunch of errors and then a prompt with which to rescue it, but Idon't know where to start. Where shoudl I look to remove this mount?

What is your current situation ?

Do you still have the Suse/Redhat dual boot ? If so, presumably you can boot either comfortably, but when you boot Suse it give errors about hda5 ? What are the errors ? Presumably, if you installed Suse on hda5 then you'll want to mount it at some stage in the start up process - probably read only to begin with, then rw.

Cheers,

mj