Dual Booting SuSE and Slackware
 

After searching linuxquestions.org and google.com a little bit, I can't find any guides for dual booting two Linux operating systems. I already have SuSE 9.0 installed on my computer. GRUB is my bootloader. I made a separate "/boot" partition for SuSE. I have about 35 gb of unused, unpartitioned space on my hard drive. I want to set aside about 10 gb of my free space for Slackware and install Slackware. Exactly how do I go about this?

And do I need to create another swap partition? Or can I just mount the other swap partition that I created for SuSE, and use that for both operating systems?

Thank you for your help.

You can either load the kernel for Slackware directly with GRUB, or install lilo into the partition bootsector of the Slackware /boot partition (or / if u dont have one), then use the chainloader method to load lilo, and yeah they can share one swap partition.
So for example if your Slackware /boot is on /dev/hda3, which should be (hd0,2) in grub, you have something like this in your menu.lst:
With this way there's no need to install a bootloader during Slackware installation (Slackware only comes with lilo if memory serves)
Otherwise if you opt to install lilo into the partition bootsector, you can use something like this:

Thanks. So can I opt not to install lilo during the slackware installation? Would I be able to go to "menu" for the package selection part of the install and deselect it? If I did install lilo, in the menu.lst file do I absolutely have to use the chainloader method? And I'm not exactly sure what the chainloader does. Does it just, when I select Slackware in grub, go to the lilo bootloader, where slackware is the only option, and I select slackware again in lilo to boot? Thank you for your help.

If I remember correctly the installation will prompt to install lilo after the partitioning, you just have to choose not to install lilo.
Even if lilo is installed you can still load Slackware kernel directly, in fact I think its a good idea to have it installed in the partition bootsector, in case u need it.
The chainloader method basically gives control to lilo, and yeah unless configured you'll have to make anther selection in lilo.

Thanks. Just two more questions... Installing Lilo, does it write in the MBR? If it does, how do I make it so that it doesn't? You said something about installing it in the "partition bootsector," when you said that were you addressing this question? If so, could you explain a little more please?

menu.lst is located in /boot/grub, correct?

Again, thank you very much for your help. It is greatly appreciated.

During Slackware installation, when it gets to the stage where it needs to install lilo it'll give you 3 choices, do not install lilo, install into the partition bootsector or install to the MBR.By installing it to the MBR it will probably overwrite your current grub, therefore you either have to choose not to install or install into the partition bootsector, unless of course you want to use lilo instead. When lilo is installed in the partition bootsector you need something capable of loading it, such as grub inside MBR. Keep in mind that you do not need lilo at all, one bootloader is enough to boot any number of linux installations, you can even keep kernel images for Slackware in the same /boot partition, and it'll work as long as you specify correct kernel parameters.
Yeah menu.lst is in /boot/grub