My system has two 80 Gig hard drives (IDE). I have it set up with Windows2000, and SUSE 11.1 on HDA. I have SUSE 9.2 on HDB, with another 25 Gigs of space on HDB not allocated to anything.

My boot loader is GRUB. It is set up so I can boot into any of the 3 Operating Systems I now have.

I want to install Debian.

I did a dry-run of the install and chose the option for guided partitioning using largest available free space. It found the un-used free space on HDB and would put Debian there (I didn't actually go through with partitioning anything yet). So far, so good.

My question involves what to do about the boot loader. It gives me the following options:
Install the GRUB boot loader on a hard disk
Install the LILO boot loader on a hard disk
Continue without boot loader

I do not want to screw up my existing boot options. Any advice?

i use 3rd party bootloaders (bootitng, acronis) so always install grub to the ROOT dir of the linux system.

when i do that the boot loader will see it & it can be added to existing boot menu.

just be careful, if you add it to hd0, or sda (as opposed to hd0,1 or sda2 for example) it will overwrite the mbr & take over. tho in your case, since your already using grub anyway it probably wouldn't make much diffence. the new grub should see all the existing op systems.

So if I choose the option "Install the GRUB boot loader to a hard disk" it should basically just re-write my existing GRUB with the already installed OSs plus the new Debian OS?

it should do that. 1 caveat, if you install to the root dir i dont think the old grub will automatically see it, you have to add it manually.

if your not comfortable with grub editing back up your mbr & add it to the hard drive, the new grub install should see your existing systems.

remember, sda or hd0 is your 1st hard drive. sda1 or hd0,0 is the 1st partition on your 1st hard drive. specifying sda or hd0 will put it on the mbr. specifying sda1 will keep it off the mbr & youll have to add it manually, unless your using acronis or another 3rd party boot manager.

If I choose the option, "Continue without boot loader", would I be able to boot the newly installed Debian system from the installation CD (or DVD)?

I basically just want to kind of check Debian out as a possible OS for a computer build I plan to do this winter. I absolutely do not want to do anything to botch my current setup. I have screwed up boot loaders before, I usually get it right (as evidenced by my current triple boot system), but I don't want to push my luck. And I'm not smart enough to fix things like that without a lot of help.

Edit: If my memory isn't playing tricks on me I seem to recall once installing Red Hat under similar circumstances and putting the boot loader for it on a floppy, then setting my BIOS with the floppy as 1st boot. I don't want to use a floppy, not sure if mine even still works with all the dust and cobwebs it has accumulated in the last several years since last use, but perhaps I could do something like this with a CD?

I don't think so.Its possible to reinstall grub from the install disc,but that's not what you're after.
If you want to boot your install of Debian but don't want to risk reinstalling or modifying grub you could use super grub disk to boot the installed system.And obviously you can use it to reinstall grub.
Is there a reason that you are not trying a debian live disc?.
Just boot Debian from a live cd if you just want to try it.

Thanks, Daveb3 and trooper.

I have the live CD for Debian, and several other distros. I want to do an actual install of Debian and then see how it is to set everything up, configure printers, wifi, download apps, codecs, keeps me busy and out of trouble.

Ok,good luck with Debian.
Checkout super grub disk,its worth having around just in case.

i have put grub on a floppy in the past & it worked. dont think the installer is capable of writing to cd. cds have a completely different file system.

if you install pure debian, at the 1st screen offering to install grub tell it no. the next screen offers alternative places to put it with examples. i believe floppy would be /dev/fd0.

re troopers live cd sug. i tried pclinuxos yesterday. worked pretty good. hadnt heard of super grub disk, will have to check it out.

OK, I just got my Debian install up and running. I have a lot of work to do to get it set up the way I want.

Installation was slow but straight forward. The only glitch was in setting up a swap partition, I wanted to use the existing swap that the other two linux distros are using but it wouldn't let me. So I just skipped the swap partition, I have 2 gigs of memory so I should be OK.

I downloaded the 4.4 GB DVD ISO and burned it to a DVD but for some reason I couldn't install from it. So I used the installation CD that I downloaded earlier and when the install got to the point where it asked to scan other media I put in the DVD. It asked for it at one point during the install and copied files from it so it wasn't a total waste. It also dowmloaded a lot of files from the internet, which was why it took so long.

Before I started I downloaded a free boot manager called G.A.G. (ISO) and put it on a CD. I installed it to the MBR and set it up to boot my 3 installed OSs. Brilliant little program, easy to set up and use, even for a klutz like me. However when I got to the point in the Debian install where it gave me the option to install GRUB in the MBR I went ahead with it since it had detected my other OSs (SUSE11.1, SUSE9.2, Win2000). This of course overwrote the G.A.G. boot manager, but it works, and my thinking was that if things went wrong I already knew I could use G.A.G. to fix it.

glad to hear its up. when i installed lenny from cd1 it d/l 991 files, squeeze d/l 1141, took a while.

ill have to check out gag, i kind of collect bootloaders.

i share my swap between debian lenny/squeeze & ubuntu, maybe something to do with suse?