Can we intall 2 diff linux distor on same machine, on same hdd ??????


i wanted to install ubutu on rhel 4.


can some one tell how to do that

thanx.

You shouldn't have a problem doing this and have 2 possible ways of doing it:
1) install a VM manager (such as virtualbox) which allows you to run an OS from within anaother OS. There is plenty of help and support available for this.

2) the natural way would be to dual-boot in the same sense as many people do with Windows and Linux.
if we take a typical hard drive (/dev/hda) which is 50 GB then we could use the following partition layout:

/dev/hda1 - boot - 100MB
/dev/hda2 - swap - 2GB (i have a lot of RAM so can get away with this)
/dev/hda3 - RHEL / - 10GB
/dev/hda4 {LVM} - 38GB {
/dev/hda5 - Ubuntu / - 10GB
/dev/hda6 - joint /home - 28GB
}

i would install RHEL first ensuring that it only formatted hda1,2,3 (and possibly 6 if it needed doing) so you would then have a working RHEL system that the boot menu would start with ROOT/dev/hda3 and that mounts both /dev/hda1 and /dev/hda6 to their appropriate places.
The 2nd step would be to boot with the Ubuntu installer (I am not overly familiar with this - sorry) and instruct it to install itself to /dev/hda5 while using /dev/hda1 & 6 as their relevant intentions although not formatting them). It is important not to have the boot loader installed when installing the 2nd distro as it would wipe away the first install (most distros give you the option to refuse it to install the boot loader). Once this is done you should be able to add a new entry to your menu.lst (if using GRUB) that boots up Ubuntu using the ROOT=/dev/hda5 parameter to the kernel.

I suggest that you do NOT share the home partition; incompatibility in software versions and the use of GNOME versus KDE might confuse the system. Instead you can add an additional partition for sharing.

Not familiar with RHEL, so don't know if it picks up other distro's automatically during the install. Ubuntu does (detected Slackware (2x) as well as WinXP in a quadruple boot), so I suggest that you install that last.

It will not wipe out the first install, only overwrite the bootloader. I allowed Ubuntu to install Grub in the MBR without problems, so I don't agree with this advise.

Yes good points - I overlooked both of these.


My apologies for not proof-reading my post before posting - of course I mean it will only overwrite the bootloader. Sorry for any confusion

Thanks for your help,,,,

but what about the /boot partitions for ubuntu,

is it fine if we install ubuntu bootables to be in /boot( RHEL bootable partition ) or to create seperate /boot for ubunto,if yes then how to do that.

can some one help me on this ! ! ! ! !.

Create a partition for the Ubuntu install and install it. There's no need for a separate /boot partition. During the install just choose to not use the existing RHEL /boot and it will create it's own in the / partition.

Choosing to use the RHEL /boot could potentially cause Ubuntu to overwrite some of the RHEL boot files and create a nasty problem for you.

One installation is finished you may have to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst a bit to make sure a boot option for RHEL is there, but Ubuntu's installer should recognize it and do that automatically.