Multi-boot troubles
 

Hello, I'm new to the forum and linux in general.
I have an old desktop I'm tinkering with, 256 MB of RAM but 110GB of harddrive space. I'm planning to put half a dozen different linux distributions on it to test things out and learn a bit.

I'm hoping to actually put the kernels of these distributions in a GRUB partition - "just for fun" as the man says. :cool:

I'm having two troubles, with GRUB I guess, at the moment.
First of all, I'm using GRUB 0.97 which I actually kind of like, but if this is the cause of my problems I can try to install a newer version.

My single hard-drive is currently set up as follows:
sda1 - flagged as boot - 100 MB - labeled GRUB - ext2fs
(GRUB is installed and is running from this partition.)

sda3 - swap - 1200 MB

sda2 - extended
sda5 - 15GB - ext4 - Puppy Linux 5.2 installed (produces GRUB error 13)
sda6 - 15GB - ext4 - Crunchbang 10 installed (produces GRUB error 15)
sda7 - 15GB - ext2 - empty
sda8 - 15GB - reiserfs - Knoppix, the first I installed, and the only working OS at the moment.

My menu.lst file is:
default 0
timeout 20
color cyan/blue white/blue

title KNOPPIX
root (hd0,7)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda8 rootwait ... etc.

title Puppy
rootnoverify (hd0,4)
kernel /vmlinuz pmedia=atahd
initrd /initrd.gz

title Crunchbang
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-5-686
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-5-686


I've never been able to boot into puppy since I installed it. It is returning the "Unsupported or invalid executable file" error.

However, at one point I had puppy installed (on sda3, under a different partition arrangement) by itself. It was working well, but I had accidentally overwritten the MBR and could not longer boot Bodhi. So I reformatted everything with this new setup that made more sense to me and started over. Puppy's version of gparted was giving me trouble, so I used my Knoppix disk, and then I thought wth, just install Knoppix.

I gave up on trying to fix puppy and just now installed Crunchbang, but then I got error 15, that it can't find the kernel. I stole the lines in my menu.lst file from Crunchbang's own file, grub.cfg. (It insisted on installing grub and wouldn't let me go on without it, so I installed it to itself, so it wouldn't overwrite my GRUB partition.)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I'm fairly new to Linux so I could be making complete beginner mistakes. But this is certain to teach me a bit about it, and I can play with my old desktop as much as I like.

(I'm using Mandriva 2010 on my laptop, and lovin' it.)

What grub version are you seeing at boot?
1.98 or .98?

GRUB version 0.97
I grabbed it off the Knoppix CD.

No particular reason I should be attached to it, I just liked how clean (and geeky) it is. I haven't even seen GRUB 2.

This is a Pentium III (533MHz) with 256MB RAM by the way.

I beleive that each os has to have it's own boot loader installed to the /, you can install boot loadersto each OS & continue to use grub.

But you need to get loaders.
http://www.softpanorama.org/Commerci...own/grub.shtml
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCdRecovery

Old grub version
 

I installed the GRUB that came with Puppy on my separate partition, and it now accepts puppy's vmlinuz. It is also booting Knoppix.

Crunchbang is another story, but it appears to be using a newer version of GRUB. So I should probably get over it and install that anyway.

Thanks for the links, I haven't seen this softpanorama link before.

Crunchbang uses grub2
To me grub2 is easier.

An update: I did get everything booting, just using GRUB 1.

I first attempted to install GRUB2 to my /grub partition, but it didn't work for some reason. I then manually copied all the files from crunchbang's /boot/ and /boot/grub folders to my /grub partition, and that did not work for me. I have left these files there, so the extra configuration files in the /boot/ folder may be helping.

I no longer see the version number for GRUB, I believe I had previously installed GRUB using puppy linux 5.2. (As opposed to the Knoppix version, which prints "Version 0.97" at the top) So Puppy's version of GRUB is what I reverted back to when I couldn't get GRUB2 running.

Anyway, for some reaosn, now it's booting crunchbang, ubuntu mini, knoppix and puppy with no hassles!

I may update to Grub2 if this fails to boot another distro, but so far I'm very happy.

Post output of
or

fdisk -l
 

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0002892f

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13 102400 83 Linux
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 14 7663 61443073 5 Extended
/dev/sda3 14459 14594 1084416 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda5 14 1926 15360000 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 1926 3838 15360000 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 3838 5750 15360000 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 5751 7663 15360000 83 Linux