Triple Boot Win7, Fedora 12, Linux Mint 8
 

Hi

I am currently running Vista on my Thinkpad T500 but will receive my Win7 Upgrade soon. I will make a clean install anyways so how do I set up a triple boot with Fedora 12 and Linux Mint 8? In which order should I install the OSs? I would also like to have a storage partition I can access with all three OSs. How do I do that?
I would appreciate a step-by-step instruction although I have installed Ubuntu before and am not a total newbee.

Thanks

Install Windows first, then install the Linux versions.

The storage partition can now be just about any filesystem (Linux typically handles NTFS). I prefer to have shared data on a Linux filessytem (eg EXT3) and then access from Windows using something like the ext2fsd driver. By using the Linux filesystem, I have better control of permissions.

A reasonable partitioning setup would be something like this:

#1: Windows, 15-20GB
#2: Linux swap (equal to your RAM--for suspend to disk), at the end of the drive
#3: Linux / ( I never bother with a separate /boot partition), ~15GB
#4: Extended
Logicals:
#5: Second Linux, ~15GB
#6: Shared data, ~50-100GB (or about 2/3 of the remaining space---leave some space unpartitioned for future additions)

You can just create the first partition when installing Windows, and then create the others when installing Linux.

What do you mean by "Logicals" and which Linux should I install first. Do I have to recover grub at some point? is grub the boot loader i should use?

Thanks

Logical Partitions......You are allowed 4 primary partitions, one of which can be an "extended partition", which is simply a pointer to the logicals.

After you install Windows, the first Linux install will auto-detect Windows and set up GRUB. For the next Linux install, you can also let it install GRUB, but it may not detect the other Linux. Regardless, get dual-boot working with ONE Linux before going farther.

It does not matter which Linux you install first.

And how am I going to set up the triple-boot then? Configure grub manually?

One method (of many possible)

1. Install GRUB with the first Linux install
2. On all other Linux installs, tell it NOT to install a bootloader. After the install, boot into the first Linux system.
3. Mount the partition containing /boot for the new system, and create soft links for vmlinuz and initrd such that the name is generic (I use the names I just stated)
example:
ln -s vmlinuz-2.26.12_otherjunk vmlinuz
4. Go to /boot/grub (Takes you to the /boot directory for the first Linux)and edit menu.lst to add an entry for the new system

By using the generic names for the kernel and initrd files, you can always edit menu.lst without having to keep track of the exact names. You can obviously skip step 3 and just use the exact names.

The above applies to the legacy GRUB (0.97) If you have GRUB-II, then do some searching here for how to edit the config file.

I still recommend getting dual-boot working first.....

Can I hope for the grub2 of Mint to recognise fedora?

I found some similar threads and so far it seems that the easiest way to do this is to install mint 8 with grub2 on mbr first, then install fedora with grub on its own partition and then boot into mint via grub2 and run sudo update-grub

would it work that way?

alternatively i could install fedora first and hope for the mint grub2 to recognise fedora right away which would be nicest

You only need one grub---and it goes in the MBR.

1. Install Linux #1
   
2. Install Linux #2---with no bootloader
   
3. Reboot into Linux #1 and modify the configuration file to recognize Linux #2

While the details of the config files may be different, this basic drill will work with both legacy grub and the new grub-2