A non-distro boot partition
(Skip this paragraph if you want) I'm a Linux beginner, currently with Windows 8.1 and Kali linux sharing a drive, and grub as my bootloader on a separate partition. Over time, I intend to have about 4 or so other Linux distro's added as I play around with it, sharing partitions where it makes sense to.
The question: Rather than having each distro (or a single distro) auto-mount the current boot partition containing grub, could I instead have each distro keep its own /boot virtually empty under its root partition, and only load grub's boot partition when I'm about to update grub, then unmount again? As it seems to me, grub has everything it needs to run within its partition+mbr, and only needs the files from /etc folder during the install and update steps. What I would like to do is have a grub boot partition that's not associated with any particular distro on the machine, but can be mounted and modified on-demand whenever I want to make changes. |
You can achive something similar with what you've said, but you failed to account of something.. Using one distro's grub is actually this exact thing..
Ohh, and you need each /boot/ since there lies most distributions kernels.. Grub is useless if it has nothing to load :P |
You can have a separate boot or even grub partition but the setup is quite a bit different than normal installs. Also, as Smokey_justme said, you need the kernel and initrd files for each distribution to boot. What exactly are you trying to accomplish?
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Hmmm, well, am I to understand that currently you have a single boot partition for all your Linux OSs? Because that can actually cause problems if the kernel packages collide (for example if they use a symlink to point to the current kernel -- not to mention the initrd image which usually uses the same name across distributions)...
What I meant in my previous post is that you should let every system have it's own /boot directory in the root partition.. That way, you'll have no problems and all systems will be separated from each other.. |
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If you had a separat boot or grub partition, it would have to be mounted in order for you to boot just as when you boot your system, the / partition needs to be mounted. Yes, you can create a separate boot or even just a grub partition.
The link below at Ubuntu (I think Kali is Ubuntu derived?) explains how to create a separate boot partition after Install for both Grub2 and Grub Legacy. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Cr...onAfterInstall More information on this as well as creating a dedicated 'grub' partition at the site below, the posts by 'Herman' in particular and there is a link to more detailed information in post 2 by Herman. The link only discusses Grub Legacy and was written 8 years ago. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1320270 It seems a dedicated Grub partition might be a better option but it's never been worth the effort to me to try it. |
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