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Old 05-14-2002, 03:49 AM   #1
MasterC
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Registered: Mar 2002
Location: Salt Lake City, UT - USA
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Dual+ Linux Distro?


Is it possible to boot into Mandrake, SuSe, RH... Or even multiple versions of the same distro? Like when my PC first boots I get a nice gui that lets me choose between Mandrake, XP, failsafe, or floppy. Thanks.
 
Old 05-14-2002, 03:59 AM   #2
Mik
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Yes if you setup your bootloader to point to the proper location. It doesn't matter to the bootloader what it's loading. You can have as many different distributions as you want, even the same distribution. Just make new partitions for each distribution. If you do that it is usually handy to share different partitions between all the distribution. Especially something like /home is handy to have the same in each distribution.
 
Old 05-14-2002, 04:04 AM   #3
MasterC
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How would I tell each distro to point to say hda1 /home for all distros to use that as a unified home?
 
Old 05-14-2002, 04:11 AM   #4
Mik
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Depends which distribution you are installing. All the ones I installed so far give you the options of setting the mount points during installation. Usually you have to choose expert install mode. Last time I installed Mandrake I could just select the partition to use for each mount point. I'm sure other distributions have something similar.
If not you can just modify the file /etc/fstab and have it use /dev/hda1 for /home
 
Old 05-14-2002, 05:58 AM   #5
Thymox
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OK, this has been asked quite a few times. Here's a very breif rundown:
  • Install distro 1
  • Make sure that /home (or whatever) are on separate partitions to /
  • Make sure distro 1 is working
  • Install distro 2 to a separate partitions, but possibly set it up to use the same /home partition as distro 1.
  • DO NOT INSTALL BOOTLOADER FOR DISTRO 2
  • Boot to distro 1
  • Mount the / partition for distro 2
  • Copy the kernel image from distro 2's / partition to the relevant place on distro 1's system.
  • Edit your lilo.conf file (or grub) and add a new entry for distro 2
  • Re-run LiLo to put the changes in place
  • Reboot your machine and see a nice new bootmenu with Distro 1 and Distro 2 in the list
 
  


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