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-   -   Is it possible? (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/is-it-possible-599349/)

zippydachamp 11-13-2007 11:45 AM

Is it possible?
 
On one box I am installing suse 10.3 now dual booting w/ windows vista ..
My question is could you multi boot; Vista + XP + Linux and win 2000 or 2003 SBS.. I would think maybe becase the Vista bootloader would controll all the Windows ones right ?

I dont really need the 2000 or the 2003 SBS but it would be neat to have all of them on 1 box for different reasons.

farslayer 11-13-2007 11:50 AM

absolutely you can multiboot several Operating systems.
Check out the links in the signature of our resident multi-boot expert Saikee for more information.

This twisted individual (and I mean that in a good way :) ) has configured a system that would boot over 100 different Operating systems on a single PC.

zippydachamp 11-13-2007 12:00 PM

Wow .. sexy !
Just getting into the world of linux.. About 5 years ago I tried a Live cd of Redhat and all I could get working was the little eyes that move with you .. I gave up after an hour :P I installed Suse 9 on a customers comp yesterday and was amazed at the progress Linux has made! Maybe it will keep my interest this time ?

zippydachamp 11-13-2007 12:01 PM

And how did he get 100 lol.. That would be like every distro of linux + windows + Mac + unix ! Sheesh !

netcrawl 11-13-2007 12:16 PM

I read somewhere that there are more than 700 Linux distributions; not all actively developed, of course.

AceofSpades19 11-13-2007 12:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zippydachamp (Post 2957692)
And how did he get 100 lol.. That would be like every distro of linux + windows + Mac + unix ! Sheesh !

there is 350+ distributions on distrowatch,so its possible to do that without installing windows or mac

saikee 11-13-2007 03:33 PM

This thread should show you the way. It has 3 Dos and 5 Windows inside plus "a few" Linux.

It is dead simple. So don't laugh!

You install 1st MS system. Get it working. Then Use Grub floppy (or Grub pen drive or Grub CD) to hide it. The MS system should nuke whatever in the MBR.

You then install the 2nd MS system. It can't see the 1st one so it will be installed in a C drive. After getting it in a working order you hide it again. The 2nd MS system hoses the 1st system's MBR.

You do the same with the 3rd system.
You do the same with the 4rd system.
You do the same with the 5rd system.
You do the same with the 7rd system.
You do the same with the 3rd system.

You then restore Grub in the MBR and edit the menu.lst to

Unhide the partition you want to boot, make it active and hide all the MS partitions that are in front of the MS system you are booting (otherwise it will rob its "c" drive status).

This method allows you to keep a boot loader for each system. Therefore it is a lot easier to maintain and rescue each one. There is no limit to the MS systems you can handle.

Just remember to install a MS system as a stand alone system it needs a primary partition to reside in and there are only 4 primaries in any hard disk. The other way is to go virtual machine.

By the way when a partition is hidden it merely toggles a binary bit in its partition type. Thus a ntfs partition type 7 is hidden when it is 17. A fat32 partition is type c and hidding it is to make it type 1c. MS systems do not support partition type other than its own kind so PC users have been using this known behaviour to multi-boot MS systems. If you must know more here is a thread I tried to explain it more. Hidden partitions support is inside every Linux. You can see them listed in fdisk, cfdisk and sfdisk. The wheel has been invented many years ago. I just use it.

AceofSpades19 11-13-2007 04:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by saikee (Post 2957883)
This thread should show you the way. It has 3 Dos and 5 Windows inside plus "a few" Linux.

It is dead simple. So don't laugh!

You install 1st MS system. Get it working. Then Use Grub floppy (or Grub pen drive or Grub CD) to hide it. The MS system should nuke whatever in the MBR.

You then install the 2nd MS system. It can't see the 1st one so it will be installed in a C drive. After getting it in a working order you hide it again. The 2nd MS system hoses the 1st system's MBR.

You do the same with the 3rd system.
You do the same with the 4rd system.
You do the same with the 5rd system.
You do the same with the 7rd system.
You do the same with the 3rd system.

You then restore Grub in the MBR and edit the menu.lst to

Unhide the partition you want to boot, make it active and hide all the MS partitions that are in front of the MS system you are booting (otherwise it will rob its "c" drive status).

This method allows you to keep a boot loader for each system. Therefore it is a lot easier to maintain and rescue each one. There is no limit to the MS systems you can handle.

Just remember to install a MS system as a stand alone system it needs a primary partition to reside in and there are only 4 primaries in any hard disk. The other way is to go virtual machine.

By the way when a partition is hidden it merely toggles a binary bit in its partition type. Thus a ntfs partition type 7 is hidden when it is 17. A fat32 partition is type c and hidding it is to make it type 1c. MS systems do not support partition type other than its own kind so PC users have been using this known behaviour to multi-boot MS systems. If you must know more here is a thread I tried to explain it more. Hidden partitions support is inside every Linux. You can see them listed in fdisk, cfdisk and sfdisk. The wheel has been invented many years ago. I just use it.

I thought you can only have 4 primaries in an IDE disk, but in a SATA disk it is unlimited?

saikee 11-13-2007 06:46 PM

I think Vista starts to call every partition a primary now. There may be a new standard cooked up by a couple big companies like Intel and HP to introduce a standard different to that used by the PCs. It works as another management layer occupying a full partition. The motive appears to gain a bigger market share to sell their products. There are in various forms to bring about DRM, EFI, Trust computing etc. A few proprietary software also have been selling the idea of having 256 primaries.

In Linux it is structured as primary and logical partitions. In its existing format Linux can talk to and co-exist with all other operating systems.


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