Ok, I got Fedora Core 2 installed for 2 reasons. I wanted to try Fedora, and I wanted to try Gnome 2.6. So far I love both of them, however, I have a couple of questions for both. As I said in the subject too, I am a newbie so you might have to walk me though any answers.

1. I'm not familiar with grub at all, how do I modify it to boot my other Linux systems? I have 1 mounted on hda2, and another on hda3.

2. Is there any good file sharing software for Fedora (and Gnome 2.6)? Something like Apollon or Gift.

Other than these two questions I am very impressed with Fedora and with Gnome. They have a very good look and feel and very easy to use I think. I went to fedorafaq.org and got the new yum.conf file and have been teaching myself how to use yum and I like it. I think it's just as easy to use as apt-get. It needs a gui frontend though. I've been thinking about installing apt and then installing synaptic for just that reason. Thanks in advance for the help!

The boot menu for Grub is generally located in /boot/grub/menu.lst ( which is really just a symbolic link to the grub.cfg file in that same directory ).

Look at the previous entries in it to know how to create new ones.

Ok, I tried copying the previous lines in that file and it still doesn't work. It tells me something about the filesystem being corrupt, but I know that's not true. Here is what my grub.conf file currently looks like:

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You do not have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.
# root (hd0,5)
# kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hda6
# initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,5)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Fedora Core (2.6.5-1.358)
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.5-1.358 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.5-1.358.img
title Mandrake
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.3-7mdk root=/dev/hda3 ro rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.3-7mdk.img
title Linspire
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.24 root=/dev/hda2 ro rhgh quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.24.gz
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

Can anybody see what I've got wrong here?

Mandrake
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.3-7mdk root=/dev/hda3 ro rhgb quiet
Linspire
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.24 root=/dev/hda2 ro rhgh quiet

This is just a guess. But first I don't use rhgb unless its for a RedHat OS and ro should go before root=
also try and use the label of the partion. Example:
for a knoppix install I used /knoppix as my partion name

kernel /boot/vmlinux-.2.4.24 ro root=LABEL=/knoppix quiet

That worked for me.

As for file sharing I don't know those apps and use Azureus for Bit Torrents but thats all I need and there is xmule for emule.

Thanks for the xmule suggestion. I'll give that a shot, but the idea for grub didn't work. I still can't boot into my other distros.

Ok, I'm getting somewhere finally. Now, when I select the other operating systems, it will successfully load the kernel and start to boot. However, when it gets to the point where it needs to load the filesystem, for instance, for Mandrake, instead of looking in /dev/hda3 for the filesystem, it will look in Fedora's /dev/hda6 and then of course, it won't find it, and will crash. Here is what my grub.conf file looks like now:

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You do not have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.
# root (hd0,5)
# kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hda6
# initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,5)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Fedora Core (2.6.5-1.358)
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.5-1.358 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.5-1.358.img
title Mandrake
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.3-7mdk root=/dev/hda3 splash silent
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.3-7mdk.img
title Linspire
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.24 root=/dev/hda2 splash silent
initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.24.gz
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

I hope someone's got some suggestions here for this

try this I also boot Mandrake off of fedora core 2 I use mandrake 10


title Mandrake 10
kernel (hd0,2)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda3 devfs=mount acpi=ht

initrd (hd0,2)/boot/initrd.img

that shoud work, because that's how mine works and our harddrive seem to be partitioned simularly. I have one question to ask you how did you partition your harddrive?


my hardrive looks like this

//////////windows////////////|////////////////mandrake//////////|///////////////fedora cor 2/////////////|///////////////////swap///////////

hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4


here's the tricky bit Fedora will think that it's hda 2 while mandrake will think the same (have no idea why). It gets really complex when it comes to 3 linux distros. So I would boot all of your oses and place a file somewhere with the name. Then I would boot fedora and mount all of your partitions and read the files. This is because grub will see the partitions the same way fedora does. So ounce you figure out wich os is where do a google search for booting Linspire with grub and fill in the proper harddrive partitions. ex: kernel (hd0,2)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda3 devfs=mount acpi=ht in this example taken from my grub config file you can see that the kernel is at hda3 in 2 ways. the first way is the (hd0,2). the second is obvious. Grub names hard drives the same way as linux does, except it use numbers seperated by commas. the first part is the drive letter like hda writen as hd0, o being a, 1 geing b etc. the second is the parttition 0 being 1, (my windows one), 1 being 2 (mandrake for me even though fedora thinks it's hda3 (don't ask why!!!)) etc. Mandrake should boot fine for you with the code at the top (assuming the drive are named correctly based on your grub config file).

your config file tells me that your drive looks like this


///////////windows/////////////|///////////Linspire/////////////////|///////////////mandrake///////////|////////////////////////?/////////////////|//////////////?/////////////||//////////fedora///////////|
hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4 hda5 hda6

I don't no what's on hda 4 and 5, but I assume that they are swap partions or somthing else. You may have you harddrive partitioned wrong. You need 1 partition for each 4 of your operationg systems and 1 swap partition for all 3 of your Linux distros. It may not be possible for you to run a 4 operating system on one disk, becasue I think you are limited to 4 primary partitions and the swap file may also be a primary pratition. It was very hard for me to get 3 operating system working on 1 drive I can only imagine how hard it must be to get 4. If your swap is a primary partition you may have to buy another hardrive and put your swap file on it (you could buy a reall old hardrive with little space it should be aprox 2 times your ram, or you could buy a bigger hardrive and put one or more of your distros on it. I've also heard of creating a swap file, I don't know how to make one. If you have partition magic load it up and tell me what it says about your harddrive partitions. May I ask what you're doing with all of those distros? I use two linux distros for back up purposes I don'r really use mandrake unless somthing goes wrong with fedoa core 2.