Hello everyone,

This is my first posting here at linux questions, and I would like to ask a question about dual booting with Slackware stable (currently 14.2) and Slackware -current. Just asking for some general advice, because I'm still somewhat new with Slackware in general.

I fully understand that using -current is meant as the testing branch (to find and report bugs, etc) for the next stable release of Slackware (such as Slackware 14.3 or 15). I understand it's not meant for a production server or workstation, but to find bugs, and help in the development of the next stable release of Slackware. I would be using stable (14.2) for most day to day activities, and -current to play around with, and help find and report any bugs I might find.

Some background, I have been using Linux for the past 19 years, various distributions including Debian, Mandrake, Red Hat, CentOS, Slackware, (K,X,U)buntu, Linux Mint, PCLinuxOS, Mepis, AntiX, and others. And MS-DOS and Windows for the past 26 years.

I would like to install and dual boot (on a single hdd) both Slackware 14.2 and Slackware -current, both 64 bit. My custom computer is powered by an Intel Xeon X3450 CPU on a SuperMicro X8SIA motherboard, with 32 GB of ECC RAM, PCI-E nVidia 9800 GT, PCI Sound Blaster, SATA DVD-RW drive, and SATA 1.0 terabyte hard disk drive. It's a computer I built from parts about a year ago. Been building my computers for the past 20 years, because I enjoy building computers, and I get to choose exactly what components I want. This is a desktop computer, not a laptop.

I have used Slackware before, I'm not a total beginner. Been using Slackware for about one year. But I only know the basics of Slackware, not advanced things yet. I can easily install programs from slackbuilds with sbopkg, but I have never rebuilt the kernel for instance.

Okay now getting to my actual question. I would like to dual boot Slackware 14.2 and Slackware -current on that hard drive. Currently the hard drive has Linux Mint, which I will remove and wipe.

Any suggestions on how to partition my drive? I'm thinking about installing 14.2 first, in it's own EXT4 partition. And installing -current afterwards in it's own EXT4 partition. Can they share a swap partition, or will they conflict with each other? Should I make a separate "media" partition, to share my personal files (documents, pictures, music, etc) between them? I know that they should not share a "home" partition, because there would be different versions of the same programs (KDE, XFCE, Firefox, etc) which could mess up configuration settings.

I'm thinking each would have their own root partitions, and the home partition inside the root, for mostly configuration files and such. And I could make a separate "media" partition they would share, for my personal files (documents, pictures, music, etc), perhaps in the NTFS file system. Easier with permissions that way.

I'm thinking something like this.

/dev/sda1 for slackware 14.2 64-bit, EXT4 (maybe 100 GB)
/dev/sda2 for slackware -current 64-bit, EXT4 (maybe 100 GB)
/dev/sda3 for swap (around 4 GB) -- remember I have 32 GB of RAM memory
/dev/sda4 for shared media partition, NTFS (the rest of the hdd, close to 796 GB)

I'm comfortable using both cfdisk and gparted to partition a drive.

When the next stable release comes out, I would upgrade the 14.2 to the next stable release (14.3 or 15, whatever it will be). And I would keep -current as forever current.

This will not be a server, nothing like that. Only a home desktop for internet browsing, checking email, listening to music, playing games, photo and video editing, some html and python programming, etc.

Would this work well? Would they conflict with each other in anyway, now or in the future? How do I take care of the lilo boot loader? Assuming lilo will work in this kind of setup, which Slackware version should control the lilo boot loader? Or perhaps use grub instead?

I have a strictly mbr motherboard, no uefi. And the hard drive is 1 TB, which is below the limit for requiring uefi.

Thank you,

Howard

Welcome to LQ Slackware forum

Partitions size are ok for Slackware install. You always can resize later.
I don't know how to manage 32GB of RAM and a swap partition for hibernation
(if you will hibernate), if you need a full 32GB swap partition.

What I do for lilo is to mount one Slackware in the /mnt of the another,
in -stable I mount -current in '/mnt/Slack-current'.
In lilo.conf I point the -current kernel and initrd to '/mnt/Slack-current'.
Hope this helps.

Your partitioning looks like it would work to me, I had a similar setup a year or two ago and I did use a single swap for both 14.x and -current. As long as they're not running at the same time I don't think that there would be any conflict.

Just make sure that you edit lilo.conf with 2 entries and point one entry to 14.x and another to -current. You will probably find that you will need to re-edit lilo.conf later when kernel upgrades happen or if you rerun (update) lilo.

With that amount of RAM you do not need a swap partition at all, unless you are planning on hibernating.

I suggest maintaining lilo from your -current install. The stable Slackware releases almost never get kernel updates, whereas -current can get very frequent kernel updates. Personally, I copy the kernel (and initrd.gz as I use the generic kernel) from the stable release into a subdirectory in the /boot directory of my -current install and point lilo to use those files for booting the stable release rather than maintaining mounts.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thank you for the replies and suggestions.

You guys have given me some good ideas, I need to consider.

I normally don't install two or more operating systems on a hard drive, because I have multiple hard drives mounted in individual trays, which I can slide in and out of the computer. I use mobile rack enclosure trays, with a key lock. Each hard drive has it's own tray, which can slide into the rack mount. I only use one at a time, the others sit on a table when not in use. Easy way to multi-boot multiple operating systems. This is what I normally do.

I was just considering trying two versions of Slackware (stable and current) on the same hard drive, in their own partitions. Something I rarely do, I normally only have one operating system per hard drive. I wanted to try something more complex, just to experiment really. Usually when I try to multi-boot, with two or more operating systems sharing a hard drive, I sometimes run into problems after updates. Sometimes grub gets completely messed up.




I don't do any hibernating on this computer, and it has a lot of RAM memory, so it's nice I don't need a swap partition. I usually create a swap partition, even when not really needed. Out of habit I guess.

I realize at the end of the day, it's my computer, and my decision to make.

FWIW I have six (6) operating systems on this box installed between 2 x 2TB drives. I never hibernate, have a swap partition on each drive which all installs share. The total swap space is 1 GB on a box with 8GB RAM and it is exceedingly rare that any Swap is used and even then on those rare occasions never exceeds 2%.

I finally decided to install Slackware -current 64 bit on it's own hard drive. Did that a few hours ago, and is working fine for me. Only made two partitions, / and /home. Don't need swap on this computer, it has 32GB of RAM memory. And besides, I never hibernate my desktop (or laptop for that matter), I always turn off when finished.

I currently have 7 (yes seven) different hard drives, each mounted inside it's very own tray, that I can slide into the mobile rack mount enclosure system I have inside this desktop case. One hard drive is for Windows 10, the rest are all Linux. They range in size from 160 GB to 1 TB in size. I only use one hard drive at a time, the others sit on a table next to my computer.

So I have currently:

Linux Mint 18.3 (XFCE) on the 1TB drive.
Windows 10 Home on a 500GB drive.
Slackware -current on a 500GB drive.
Dual-boot Slackware 14.2 and FreeDOS 1.2 on a 320GB drive, with FreeDOS on the first partition.
Linux Lite 3.6 (XFCE) on a 320GB drive.

And I have two different 160GB drives, both are empty I believe. Not sure what to do with them, but I will be installing some version of Linux on them eventually.

Been using mobile rack mount enclosures for my desktop computers, for the past 16 or 17 years. Both IDE and SATA. Makes it easier for me, to dual-boot with Windows.

Currently, I've got two installs of Slack, 1 reg, and 1 current, and two installs of Void and one Windows 10 on my laptop. Two hdds. One is 256 ssd, Windows 10, and its partitions, then the rest goes to Linux. Whichever ones I'm running. and my swap is a 16GB SD Card that rarely ever gets used, if ever.

The second hdd is for data to share between the OS'es, and the two others Linux OS's. All of the OS'es are now running with their own home partitions.

I use grub2 to keep track of everything.

You're doing a desktop. Not too much difference. The OS system side, min size to 30GB, room to grow, and you might still not use all of it. Depends on what you're installing.

Not wanting to go through the nightmare of installing Windows again. I've moved my partitions more than once to mix things up and get them the way I want them whenever I decide to change something.

As everyone has already covered most of the basics, GPT partitions might be worth looking into as well as opposed to MBR. Because it removes the partitions limitations. Even though one may think, MBR will surfice I am not going to make more that its limitations. It's still better to be safe then sorry. Especially is you're only planing on using one hdd and two installs of OS'es and a separate home(s) and data partition between the two and a swap.

disk partitioning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning

mbr
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record

gpt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

without the swap its still min 5 partitions, 2 os, 2 home, 1 data. For my share between Linux'es I use ext4 with the permissions set at 775 ,and same user name, and primary group, and UID's matching. Using 775, I don't much bother with checking the UID matching anymore.

for both OS'es as Slack you're going to end up with the same UID between your first user in both systems anyways.

NTFS you're going to need to take defraging into consideration.

Splitting the system and home, putting them on separate partitions, encase something really bad goes wrong with the system the home is separated so it's data is safer, or change the OS my home is left alone. the configs for WM are safe too, they are kept already set up the way I like my WindowManagers.

Keeping in mind the sizes can be changed after install.

That is very true, what you have written BW-userx. In the end, I decided to keep each operating system separate, each on it's own hard drive. That is the luxury of having a mobile rack mount enclosure system with multiple trays. I have 7 different hard drives, I don't really need to install more then one OS on each. Unless I wanted to multi-boot more then about 7 operating systems.

As it is, one hard drive has Slackware 14.2 which is 64 bit, along with FreeDOS 1.2 (which is a open source clone of PC-DOS and MS-DOS). That particular hard drive has a few partitions, one FAT32 for FreeDOS, and the rest are ext4 for Slackware 14.2 Linux.

My Slackware -current 64 bit is by itself, on a MBR partitioned hard drive, with only two partitions, / and /home. If I did not have my rack mount enclosure and trays, I would need to do something similar to what you, and other people have done.

how many drives can the case have at one time?

If more than one, maybe have the /home separate of any linux install?

Well it's a huge ATX case, with enough room for 9 hard drives inside it, along with 3 optical drives. It's the Antec full-tower "Twelve Hundred" (1200) case. I bought this monster of a case about 10 years ago, it's been a wonderful case for me.

It's listed as:

Steel ATX Full Tower
2 x USB 2.0, 1 x eSATA, HD Audio In and Out Front Ports
Default 3, up to 12 External 5.25" Drive Bays
Up to 9 Internal 3.5" Drive Bays

So I have plenty of choices, on how I want to arrange things inside.

At some point later this year, not sure exactly when, I will be deleting my Windows 10 (getting sick and tired of the forced updates, Microsoft spying, how it deletes some of my programs after each major update, etc).

When I eliminate Windows from the equation, I might just mount all the hard drives permanently inside the case, and use all of the space for Linux.

I'm considering a few different scenarios of installs.

One scenario I have in my mind, is to install only Slackware, and dedicate each hard drive as a different partition, as part of the Slackware install. I actually have 9 SATA hard drives, I could use in this computer. They Range in space from 80 GB to 1 TB.

With so many hard drives, I could separate out /home, /tmp, /var, /usr, etc; with perhaps additionally something like /project or /work also, each on it's own hard drive.



Another scenario I have in my mind, I could install a few different Linux distributions (such as Slackware, Linux Mint, Manjaro, Debian, OpenSUSE, PCLinuxOS, Solus, CentOS, etc), and use one of the hard drives to hold my personal files (documents, music, pictures and videos) as a shared partition between each Linux distribution.

For what I normally do on a computer, I don't really need any swap space on this particular machine. Mostly because I have 32 GB of RAM memory, it has never used any swap, and I never hibernate this desktop computer anyway.

With either scenario, I could dedicate some space for my VirtualBox images. And some hard drive space for backups.

(I also keep backups on a couple external hard drives, and a few USB flash drives, and occasionally will burn a DVD).

Once before i had surplus hard disks i could play with.

1. It turned out one wants to keep important data (bulk) on the newest and least used drive - which happens usually to be the largest one.
2. The most volatile data (/var /run /tmp) are best served by the most fast storage, and that again, happens to be the newest, and usually the biggest (the bigger - the faster) drive at hand.
3. The engine (ie OS data) being a blend of volatile (during install) and read only random access (during boot and day to day use) really can be put to any lesser performing drive, if using Linux, but at the expense of owners discomfort and time loss. Otherwise -->newest.

It is worth nothing that the drives that are older, are ever less worth and provide ever less of a fraction of the newer drives capacity.

So, over the course of time, I learned to let go of the older dives, be it sell, or gift.

And lived happily ever after (after enough data carving and recovery of data disasters on too old drives i tried keeping)

and, I am yet to fill a 50GB (fifty gigs) partition with Slackware (when /home and /tmp are mounted elsewhere)

just my 2c

did I say You can mount /tmp on ram and get considerable speed gains of those 32GB RAM?

2c more

That is quite true, we often want to use the biggest and faster drives to hold our data.

And also quite true, we eventually have nothing to do with the small and slow drives, so we end up getting rid of them.

For instance, not much point in keeping 500 MB IDE drives, in this day and age. Even MS-DOS can fill up quite quickly on that.

I might have to try that, your suggestion of mounting my /tmp on RAM memory. Thank you for the suggestion.

Howard