dual booting multiple distros with 2 hdds
 

Im kinda new to the whole "linux thing" and i have been installing and reinstalling distros for weeks, searched google for what i need, and i can never find anything. I am trying to dual boot windowsXp on one hdd with 80gigs 7200 rpm, and fedora core2 test3/suse/freebsd on the second hard drive 100 gigs 5400 rpm. i just want to be able to choose which os to boot into when i boot up, i cant use a floppy, because i dont have a floppy drive. Help would be really appreciated.

*suse9.0/freebsd 1.6/fedora core 2 test 3

I'm not sure if you want to use all the linux OS's at once or not but I'll assume you do since you have 100GB. Install XP (if you haven't done so already), install fedora first because I think it has the easiest partitioning. Set up your linux partitions (they can share one swap) I have no clue about BSD so just leave open space until later don't install a boot loader. Now install BSD...and don't install a boot loader. Now install SuSE last because it has the best auto configuring for bootloaders. when it is bootloader time install LILO to the MBR of /dev/hda and tell it to leave the code in the MBR untouched. By default SuSE will be "linux" and fedora will be "linux_other" you can change that in YaST. I don't know if it will see BSD though. Try YaST and have it propose a boot loader configuration for you. If the bootloader doesn't work right away you can boot to SuSE from the SuSE install disk 1 if you have it. hope I helped. Make sure you use LILO and not GRUB.

I dont want to use lilo, because whenever i rebuild the kernal, i have to reinstall lilo, grub will stay the same, witll grub work with the installation the same with with lilo?

My box is dual boot XP and SuSE 9.0 and it wouldn't work until I switched to LILO...I'm sure you could do it with grub But I would say you should just use LILO now and find out more about GRUB after you have the system set up then switch to GRUB in SuSE (very easy w/ YaST)

Okay, thanks

no problem

no problem

i am installing fedora, and what happened was that it asked me about the partitioning, i give it the correct size i want it to be, but i dont know what i should choose as the mount point, i heard that if i did something wrong there, i would mess up the whole thing. I also could use some more detail, like, after i install fedora, i should install freebsd, how am i going to use lilo? does it auto-detect? And i would be willing to use grub for any suloution to this problem; anything that works

Alright for mounting your need a root partition and probably a swap partition and that is all that is necessary. Mount your main install destination as / yes just a slash lol. Swap partitions have no mount point. If you want to mount your windows drive in fedora I believe you need an NTFS driver...I know SuSE comes with the driver though. So mount /dev/hda1 (assuming that is your windows partition) as /Windows/C or w/e you wanna call it. That is basically it for mounting. Just make sure you have a / mount point w/ enough room to install.

I don't know much about FreeBSD but I am assuming LILO can boot to it. You only need to have ONE bootloader installed...I suggested SuSE because it will propose a configuration for you and can switch from grub to lilo pretty simply. I have never been successful dual booting w/ XP and SuSE using GRUB so i suggested LILO.