I've got SuSE 8.2 running on my machine and recently tried installing slackware too, only to find that it destroyed my SuSE 8.2 kernel . I've since reinstalled SuSE (I couldn't get on the net in Slack) but want to try Slack again, without destroying my other distro this time.

How do I do it? I'm pretty sure it must have something to do with renaming my SuSE kernel image to something else so it doesn't get overwritten but other than that I'm pretty clueless

Can someone please tell me what to do? Please make it simple (I still feel like a bit of a noob)

you've got to have a different partition to put it in.
repartition to make space. i'm sure more than the kernel was overwritten,
unless it was just your boot loader.

i did install to a different partition, and the kernel was the only thing that was replaced other than the bootloader (which I replaced out of choice). I thought all the kernels were stored together in /boot

you put the kernels where ever you wish. it's only important that the boot loader
knows where it is. /boot can be a directory or a partition. it may or may not
be shared with another linux install. i would suggest putting all of slackware
in that other partition, and setting it up to boot manually, after you install.
just dont' let it install lilo or grub, and after, add the slackware kernel to your
other lilo or whatever you are using.

Thanks for the advice, will try that later. I gotta admit I'm still pretty confused as to how I managed to overwrite my kernel last time - on my system /boot isn't a separate partion and my hdd looked like:

hda1 windoze
hda5 SuSE /
hda6 swap (shared by SuSE and Slack)
hda7 SuSE /usr
hda8 SuSE /home
hda9 Slack /
hda10 Slack /usr/local
hda11 Slack /home

in what you've got there, the suse kernel would be in hda5 and the slack
would be in hda9. maybe the kernel was (is) still there, and you just didn't
get your boot loader set up right.

look up one of the multi boot howto's and you'll learn a few things about how
to set that stuff up.

I had just reached the same conclusion

I'm still totally clueless though

I'm happy editing my lilo conf, but in SuSE whenever I start with a new option that i say is an image it wants to use the /boot/vmlinuz that is on /dev/hda5 what do I have to write into lilo conf to force it to use the one on /dev/hda9?
Thanks for all the help (and your patience!!!)

ps. my lilo conf is below


# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Fri Feb 13 17:19:54 2004


default = linux
message = /boot/message
prompt
timeout = 80
boot = /dev/hda

image = /boot/vmlinuz
label = linux
append = "hdc=ide-scsi hdclun=0 splash=silent showopts"
initrd = /boot/initrd
optional
root = /dev/hda5
vga = 0x314

other = /dev/hda1
label = windows

image = /boot/vmlinuz.shipped
label = failsafe
append = "showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off nosmp noapic maxcpus=0 3"
initrd = /boot/initrd.shipped
optional
root = /dev/hda5
vga = normal

image = /boot/vmlinuz
label = Slackware
initrd = /boot/initrd
root = /dev/hda9

mount the partition /dev/hda9 somewhere. it doesn't matter where.
maybe it's already mounted. if it's mounted at /mnt/hda9, then
the path you would probably want is /mnt/hda9/boot/vmlinuz

image = /mnt/hda9/boot/vmlinuz
label = Slackware
# initrd = /mnt/hda9/boot/initrd
root = /dev/hda9

you'll have to have hda9 mounted when you run that.