Well, I am at it once again... I am creating another multi-boot system.

Here are the distros:
Red Hat 9
Mdk 9.1
Suse 8.2 Pro

I am doing this on a 30 G drive so space is of no concern.

My question is whether anyone has installed these on the same machine before and if they noticed any best order of install. I don't really care about the order, but I wanna avoid problems since it will take a long time to do all three. I plan to use grub, but I noticed that suse's interface for the bootloader looks a little different and I usually don't use bootloader on multi-boot systems, but this time I am going to do that.
So when I am installing the second and the third, do I just install grub again and will it automatically add that additional distro to the grub menu at boot?
Hopefully I get a response soon cause I am downloading Mdk 9.1 right now and it will be done in about an hour. Also, I noticed that mdk 9.1 only has one main iso - is that all it requires now? I recall that mdk 8.2 had 3.

Just be sure to write down the partition info for each one.

I would install the first two without a /boot partition. Then install the last with a /boot partition, or save a partition to mount after the install has completed and put all of your /boot files from each distro on the /boot partition. Then you can edit the /etc/fstab for each distro. And the grub.conf file

As long as the system will boot into one of the distros after they are all installed it should not be a problem to set them up for multiboot.

Be sure you have a working boot floppy.

one other tip

I would setup /boot in /etc/fstab as noauto

this way the partition is not always mounted, this will prevent it from being damaged.


something like this

/dev/hda3 /boot reiserfs noauto,owner 1 2

So, are you saying that I only need one /boot partition overall or that I need to install three but in the end only use just one by configuring it.

install with all three having their own /boot folder

then after install you will need to setup the /boot partition with all the kernel files, initrd images, system.maps ... then setup each distros /etc/fstab and boot loader config files for the /boot partition.

ok thanks, i'll look into that