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Doctorscrad 06-29-2019 01:53 AM

Dual Booting/GRUB.. (Possibly triple booting?)
 
So does anyone here know if it's at all (possible really isn't the right word) but I guess I'm asking is it worth the trouble to configure a GRUB menu with 3 Linux Distros on it that are on the same solid state drive?

I was just finishing up a laptop build and was going to install MX Linux, Kali Linux, and Pentoo Linux..

Anyone have any particular pointers or have any experience with these.

jsbjsb001 06-29-2019 07:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doctorscrad (Post 6010196)
So does anyone here know if it's at all (possible really isn't the right word) but I guess I'm asking is it worth the trouble to configure a GRUB menu with 3 Linux Distros on it that are on the same solid state drive?

I was just finishing up a laptop build and was going to install MX Linux, Kali Linux, and Pentoo Linux..

Anyone have any particular pointers or have any experience with these.

It's perfectly possible to "tripe boot" with GRUB. That's pretty much what GRUB does - gives you a choice of which kernel and/or distro to boot. You can use it to load Windows as well. Depending on which distro install's GRUB, then that's the distro that you would use to configure GRUB.

Did you read the sticky about Kali at the top of this forum ? Because Kali is not meant to be installed on anything other than removable media of some kind, like a USB stick. It's (as the sticky states) also not meant to be a general purpose distro, and is meant for experienced users, not inexperienced users. Forgive me for saying it, but you don't appear to be very experienced to me. You therefore would be far better off with a more suitable distro - even if you do want to learn about hacking. You can install the same tools you would find in Kali on any other distro, and if you know what you're doing, then this should be easy for you to do.

colorpurple21859 06-29-2019 08:17 AM

Yes grub can boot any number of install distros. I currently have five different distros installed on my system plus windows and boot them all with grub. Whichever distro you want to control the grub bootloader should be installed last.

Doctorscrad 06-29-2019 09:38 AM

I appreciate the input from the both of you. No I hadn't read the sticky but I'll actually be going and running through those as we speak.. and you're not completely off base by saying I'm not that experienced so no worries there.

ondoho 06-30-2019 03:33 AM

Keep in mind that a (MBR) hard drive can have only 4 primary partitions, one of which is usually swap. If you need more than that, you need to create an extended partition first, which can then hold many more partitions.

Ztcoracat 06-30-2019 11:35 AM

I've triple booted many times over the years with 3 different distros on the same drive with success.

Just make sure you partition accordingly based on the size of the drive and allocate enough room for the distro and a swap partition.

What size is the HDD?

Doctorscrad 08-16-2019 02:39 AM

1 Tb SDD

BW-userx 08-16-2019 07:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doctorscrad (Post 6010196)
So does anyone here know if it's at all (possible really isn't the right word) but I guess I'm asking is it worth the trouble to configure a GRUB menu with 3 Linux Distros on it that are on the same solid state drive?

I was just finishing up a laptop build and was going to install MX Linux, Kali Linux, and Pentoo Linux..

Anyone have any particular pointers or have any experience with these.

yes, I've had up to a lot more than 2 distro on grub, I currently have

win10
slack
arcoLinux
FreeBSD

all being booted by grub, on a laptop no less.

Pointer:
Pick the distro you want to control the grub, and learn that it can be moved about giving control to whatever distro that can install grub. Customizations to the /etc/defaiult/grub file maybe make a back up and put it somewhere off the system so you an get to it if you ever need to. this helps make it faster then redoing it if necessary, just copy it over top of the one that is there. update grub. done.

Ztcoracat 08-16-2019 05:06 PM

With a 1 TB SSD you should be able to put 3 Linux distro's on comfortably.
You're good to go.

Keep in mind the last distro that you install will have the boot unless you change that.

What 3 distro's are you thinking of?

mrmazda 08-17-2019 04:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doctorscrad (Post 6010196)
Anyone have any particular pointers or have any experience with these.

Experience, no. Pointers, yes. Choose UEFI as boot method. That involves Grub less and the laptop BIOS more in the process of boot selection presentation. With the old MBR method, distros' default installation methods usually do exactly as Windows does, usurp boot control from whatever had it last, and repeat the process with each kernel update. This kind of thing does not welcome a newbie multibooter, much less an outright newbie.

UEFI has its own boot selection menu, F10 (Intel, Lenovo), F12 (Acer, Dell, Gigabyte), F8 (Asus), ESC (HP, Samsung) or others, as the starting point. Most distros' Grub uses os-prober to automatically include menu selections for every OS it finds and recognizes. So you have multiple options for choosing what to boot, and can change the default using efibootmgr using whatever happens to be booted whenever you decide you wish the default changed.

My current procedure is to mount the ESP partition only when using the OS I wish to have control (noauto option in /etc/fstab of all others), and use custom.cfg via /etc/grub.d/06_custom so that my personally created stanzas appear at the top of the default boot selection menu. I go further and remove Grub from distros I wish to not be in control, or not install Grub in the first place on those distros.

I've been multibooting multiple PCS for multiple decades, with with 20+ PCs multiboot with no less than 3 distros each and averaging well above 12 distros each, of which 3-8 are kept current to within 3-4 months. Multiboot is as much art as science. Whether it's worth the trouble depends on your goals, expectations and skills.

Doctorscrad 08-17-2019 05:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ztcoracat (Post 6025907)
With a 1 TB SSD you should be able to put 3 Linux distro's on comfortably.
You're good to go.

Keep in mind the last distro that you install will have the boot unless you change that.

What 3 distro's are you thinking of?

MX Linux 18.1
Kali 2019.1
Pentoo

And possibly Parrot Home OS

Ztcoracat 08-17-2019 07:59 PM

I've never tried Pentoo; however I have been running MX Linux for 2 years now and love it.
Great distro for an older pc.

I think you will be pleased with Parrot.
I ran Parrot for a few days live and liked it. It's a lot like Kali Linux.

Good luck with your fresh installations. Enjoy the rest of the weekend.:)

Doctorscrad 08-17-2019 11:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ztcoracat (Post 6026267)
I've never tried Pentoo; however I have been running MX Linux for 2 years now and love it.
Great distro for an older pc.

I think you will be pleased with Parrot.
I ran Parrot for a few days live and liked it. It's a lot like Kali Linux.

Good luck with your fresh installations. Enjoy the rest of the weekend.:)



is there any distribution of Linux that you would prefer/suggest to be the candidate for being in charge of GRUB

ondoho 08-18-2019 02:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doctorscrad (Post 6026318)
is there any distribution of Linux that you would prefer/suggest to be the candidate for being in charge of GRUB

no, it doesn't matter; it's (almost) the same grub on all distros.

BTW, I do not recommend Parrot at all.

bodge99 08-18-2019 03:38 AM

Hi,

A slightly different method of using Grub to multiboot. See: https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ml#post6005778

I would recommend a slight change to the initial grub.cfg.. This just makes the boot process more resilient for those times you have left a flashdrive plugged in.. Forgetting to remove it may alter how your drives are detected (i.e. what is normally detected as hd0 may now be detected as hd1 etc.)

Original initial grub.cfg entry samples:
Code:

menuentry "Mint 19.1" {
        set root='hd0,gpt4'
        configfile (hd0,gpt4)/boot/grub/grub.cfg
}

menuentry "Slackware" {
        set root='hd0,gpt3'
        configfile (hd0,gpt3)/boot/grub/grub.cfg
}

menuentry "Devuan ASCII" {
        set root='hd0,gpt6'
        configfile (hd0,gpt6)/boot/grub/grub.cfg
}

Modified initial grub.cfg entry samples:
Code:

menuentry "Mint 19.1" {
    # On hd0,gpt4/sda4
    search.fs_uuid a134ba8a-3763-4331-8756-15f3e1bade7b root
    set prefix=($root)'/boot/grub'
    configfile $prefix/grub.cfg
}

menuentry "Slackware" {
    # On hd0,gpt3/sda3
    search.fs_uuid 6db095f5-3cbe-4b86-8738-b5d045fa6438 root
    set prefix=($root)'/boot/grub'
    configfile $prefix/grub.cfg
}

menuentry "Devuan ASCII" {
    # On hd0,gpt6/sda6
    search.fs_uuid 1ccdf3dc-f75b-4be3-b12a-92e7398fd908 root
    set prefix=($root)'/boot/grub'
    configfile $prefix/grub.cfg
}

This alteration sets the root variable directly by the use of the file system UUID.

Bodge99


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