ok ive played around with Knoppix, Debian, Redhat 9 & Fedora Core and i wanted to set up a quadruple boot system. The O.S's i wanted to use would be.

Fedora Core 1
Suse 9.1
Mandrake 10
Knoppix 3.4

I have a 17 gig drive, i wanted to set each partition at about 4 gig each with about 800megs - 1 gig swap space.

anyone have any recommendations on how i would accomplish this? would it better to use GRUB or LILO? how would i configure them to work?

any insight from the pro's would be great.

Bert

Personally I would use grub - I just find the config a little more intuitive. Not that it really matters too much. One thing I would reccomend is using the tools with each distro to add the partitions as you go along (with the exception of swap which you only need to add once - just make sure you tell each distro in turn to use that partition)

I would just install your first OS - say fedora and make sure that the bootloader goes onto the mbr. Once you have it installed and you are happy it is working move onto the next OS - say SuSE. When you install it make sure that you make a boot floppy but do not install it's bootloader to the mbr - put it on the root partition instead. You can then boot with the floppy and look at the SuSE kernel name/parameters and copy these settings to your fedora bootloader. Keep doing what you did for SuSE with your other OSs.

I use XOSL for my multiboot systems. I just install LILO on the root partition of the OS and have XOSL point to each of the root partitions for the OSes. I don't run multiple linux systems, though (WIn2k, Server 2k3, FreeBSD, Slackware 9.1).

great advise david_ross...i was installing all the os's to mbr and couldnt get it to boot right if anyone else has any good advice please let me know

bert

Install the bootloader of your First distro to the MBR and the bootloader for all others to their respective root partitions. You will not be able to boot them yet. Boot to your first distro, edit your bootloader's config file (it doesn't really matter which you choose, but I prefer Lilo, so my example below is of that) and add entries for each of the other distros that simply point to another partition (as you would for booting Windows... God forbid ).When you boot your bootloader has the entries for each, and then you select one of the "others" to get to their bootloaders. Confusing?

A 17G drive isn't all that huge and you definitely don't need that much swap. I'd recommend reducing the swap to 256Mg max. -- J.W.

I use Lilo for my multi-boot.
I take the easy way now. When I install a new Linux OS I let is install Lilo the way it likes to the MBR. Then I save the lilo.conf file and add it's prefered configuration to the system I use most. Having boot floppies or an alternative is a must, of course.
I boot Windows 98, Solaris, BSD, and multiple Linux distros from my 18 partitions (27 if you count the BSD and Solaris slices).
Multi booting multiple Linux distros should prove to be pretty easy. Always make those boot/rescue floppies. It really does not matter if you use Lilo or Grub. Whichever you prefer.
I don't think anyone has mentioned Swap yet. One Swap can be shared amongst all the Linux distros.
EDIT: Please ignore my lame comment about no one mentioning swap, duh.
The nice thing about Linux is that there is not the fuss about using a primary partition. This is a big plus.
The addition of either a shared /home or some sort of personal file backup partition could be considered also. Or do you have a CDR?
Good Luck.

I do have a cdr but i havent thought about that. so your telling me i could set up another patition and have all my distros use that as my /home dir? wow that is cool...that way i can save stuff there and access all my info from any distro....way cool....i think im really going to like this I agree 1 gig swap is a bit much considering that my machine has 512megs of ram already so 256 might be a better approch to the swap. Thymox thanks for that LILO approch...i have never used LILO so i will have to try that out to...you guys are the best....any more great ideas? keep them comming....i swear once i get this machine loaded windows on my "home" computer is gone

/bert

ok I have got Fedora Core 1, Suse & Mandrake loaded so far and for the most part im doing ok but after installing mandrake is where i got a few problems.... ok here is how i partitioned my drive.

Device Start End Size (MB) Type
/dev/hda
hda1 1 510 4001 ext3
hda2 511 1020 4001 ext3
hda3 1021 1530 4001 ext3
hda4 1531 2100 4471 Extended
hda5 1531 2040 4001 ext3
hda6 2040 2100 471 linux-swap

this is what my grub.conf looks like.

title Fedora Core 1
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl ro root=LABEL=/ hdc=ide-scsi rhgb
initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl.img

title SuSE Linux
kernel (hd0,1)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda2 splash=silent desktop resume=/dev/hdab showopts
initrd(hd0,1)/boot/initrd

title Mandrake
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.3-7mdk.img root=/dev/hda3
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd

I have fedora on hda1, Suse on hda2, Mandrake on hda3 and Knoppix on hda5.
I can boot into Fedora & Suse but not into Mandrake and I havent installed Knoppix yet.

Anyone have any ides on how to get Mandrake running from looking at that info? and any ideas on what i need to do to get Knoppix running??

Bert

You have told grub that your Mandrake kernel is on the first partition of the first drive "(hd0,0)" - it is actually on the third partition "(hd0,2)". Try changing that for your Mandrake kernel and Ram disk.

DO'H should have caught that....i will change that tonight and see where i stand thx david_ross.....this board ROCKS!!!!!!!

Bert