Help with multiboot of several linux distros on 1 hard disk

Thomas Anderson · 11-24-2004, 05:34 AM

Hello,
I love VMware but I don't have enough cpu & memory on my laptop so....
What I'm wanting to do initially is at least have 3 distros on 1 hard disk and I'm guessing Grub will be my best option.
I have an 80gig hard drive on my laptop.
Since I have to use win2k for work, I already have this on the first partition.
Installing, say FC2, as a dual boot option is simple enough using Grub.
Here's the 1st question:
1. Since I'm wanting to installing a 3rd OS, where should I install the boot loader? (mbr or a separate boot sector)
2. Does it really matter where I install the boot loader?
3. When installing the 3rd OS, say Mandrake, what do I do at the end of the install when it asks me where to install the boot loader (mbr / boot sector)?
Last time I installed the 3rd boot loader it wiped reference to 1 of the OS's so I could only dual boot.
4. How then do I get the already installed Grub to recognise the 3rd OS?

Help greatly appreciated.
T.

ToniT · 11-24-2004, 06:19 AM

1,2,3: Nowhere, don't touch the booting sequence. Once you have a bootloader, you don't need more of them.

4. Add it to your grub menu, in a similar way you would put a boot choice using an other kernel version.

peter_robb · 11-24-2004, 04:16 PM

If you want to do it the LILO way ( I boot from 6 distros)
make a separate 16MB partition called /boot, copy lilo and /etc/lilo.conf there and have every distro mount it as their own /boot.

Make sure you only use that one lilo prog and that one lilo.conf file
I have make links from both files to the /boot versions.

Cheechi · 12-01-2004, 04:36 AM

i already have LILO on XP with Mandrake 10.1; since i've had no luck whatsoever with NTFSResize i choose not to use it; i never learned how to use FDISK right either apparently. all of that was simply to say that i have XP currently installed as my first partition and don't plan to change that. C:\ is also /boot, as is common with many dual boot setups where win was loaded first. my real question is simple: if i install SuSE 9.1 also, can both distros share /home (which i have as a separate partition)? if so, is it still ok to use C:\ as /boot? if not, can i make that 16MB partition anywhere on the drive or must it be at the beginning of the disc? any more info you need to help you answer i can provide. thanks in advance for helping me out.