disk partitionning for multiple linuxes

thelonius · 07-19-2006, 08:38 AM

Hello,

what is the general strategy for installing several ditros ? I think I will need to split the disk into a number of partitions equal to the number of distros. I imagine the simplest way would be to partition disk either with live linux like Knoppix or disk partitionning tool provided in any distro installator. In the latter case however, I will need to quit the installation after partioning and run it again with disabling all partitions except the one where I want to install this distro to. Afterwards I install other distros on the remaining partitions.

Does it sound correct to you ?

Thank you.

druuna · 07-19-2006, 09:32 AM

Hi,

Total (minimal) amount of partitions would be No of Distro's + 1. The 1 being a swap partition. This one swap partition can be used with all the dirstro's, there's no need to make one for all the distro's present.

Personally I create all the needed partitions, using a liveCD with fdisk, before starting the installation of the different distro's. And I, obviously, skip the partitioning part during installation of the distro's.

Your second option: Using the first distro to create the partitions is also a possibility.

Give yourself some time before deciding the layout of (extra) partitions. I have a few extra portitions that are accessible by all distro's. To name just one: /data/Software. All my software is on that partition and it is accessible by all distro's.

Hope this helps.

pljvaldez · 07-19-2006, 09:36 AM

Yup. With a setup like that though, I would do something like

Code:

/dev/hda1   /boot
/dev/hda2  swap
/dev/hda3  shared linux partition
/dev/hda4  distro1
/dev/hda5  distro2
...

You can share the swap partition between all the distros. Install the first distro's boot loader to the MBR and use the /boot partition during setup. This will put the grub config files on their own partition so that even if you wipe out the first distro, you can still boot to another distro.

On the other distros, install the bootloader to the root partition (not the MBR) and use grub's chainloader feature to chainload the other boot loaders.

The shared partition is for storing all your documents, etc that you want to use between all the distros. It can really go anywhere. Some people recommend you just use a shared /home partition, but in my (limited) experience, this is a bad idea because different distros use different versions of programs and the config files in /home get all messed up when using them across distros. So I just keep common documents on a separate partition.

Oh, and for partitioning, any partition manager will work. I personally have had great success with the GParted Live CD.

thelonius · 07-19-2006, 09:37 AM

thank you

when i lately tried to create new partition with fedora installer, i couldn't label it as i'd like, but i had to choose between predefined names like /, /tmp, /home etc.

So my question is how does one in general treat partitions and their names ?

druuna · 07-19-2006, 09:53 AM

Hi,

@pljvaldez: Good extra advise!

I firmly agree with pljvaldez about sharing /home: Don't!

Partitions can have any name you want, but there are a few that are needed if you decide to make that part a separate partition. Most distro's have predefined names which are most commonly placed on separate partitions/disks. /tmp and /home being two of those.

I don't use a (distro) GUI to set up the partitions and their devices. Editing /etc/fstab and creating mountpoints by hand is the easiest (if you know what you are doing!).

I do remember (Suse 7) that all the predefined entries could be changed (or ignored). Most of the time there are options to create your own mountpoints and links to the device (could be that that part is in the advanced options part).

XavierP · 07-25-2006, 03:52 AM

Moved: This thread is more suitable in Linux-General and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

ethics · 07-25-2006, 05:14 AM

c/fdisk is a great way to look at an overview of the disk, and work out what you can do, doing it from an installer is extra preussre and hard to research at the same time. knoppix has some variant of fdisk if i recall, dunno if it has a GUI one.

Agreed on not sharing home (or any other major directory actually), and the thing with Linux is, all of the directories can have their own partition and mount point, but if you don't want that (and you dont) then they just get put into the / partition, which i prefer so that directories are not limited to their partition size.