Questions about adding a second hard disk to install more distros
Linux - NewbieThis Linux forum is for members that are new to Linux.
Just starting out and have a question?
If it is not in the man pages or the how-to's this is the place!
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
Questions about adding a second hard disk to install more distros
hi peeps
at the moment my setup is a dual boot xp & ubuntu system and I would like to try out some of the various other linux flavours to find out which one(s) I like best.
to do this Im planning on getting a second hard disk as a slave to the first one, where I want to install the other distros.
I have three partitions at the moment, one NTFS for win xp, one ext3 for ubuntu, and one shared FAT32.
my questions are:
will adding a second hard disk, just be like increasing the logical storage capacity of the first?
will other distros allow me to install them where I want? i.e. only take up a predetermined storage space.
i'm using grub to select between xp and ubuntu, how can I update or edit grub to select between all of the to be installed distros?
1) what do you mean "increasing" ? you won't just get a single drive that's substantially bigger, unless you're using some for of LVM to abstract the filesystems from the physical devices.
2) yeah you'll be able to install wherever you want normally
3) that's the tricky bit really... generally i would say you should get the new bootloader to install into the /boot or / parititon of the new install, then manually add the bootloader entry to your primary grub.conf under ubuntu if you wish. as you've' got the bootloader installed firstly you will have a grub.conf from which you can take the required commands (assumign it IS grub of course) and 2ndly you could actually just make your main grub chainload to that parition and two seperate grub instances running to get to a new installed distro. depends what's easiest for you.
1) no, adding the second hard disk won't "magically look like" you've just added space to the first, in the sense that you can e.g. grow partitions across disk boundaries. However, you can create new partitions on the hard disk, mount them as regularly, boot from them, and basically do all the things you seem to want to do. AIUI, LVM can make the second hard disk look like an "extension" to the first.
2) Generally, yes--GNU/Linux is happy to be installed anywhere. XP wants to be on the master hard disk, but since that's what you plan to do, no problem. Otherwise, you can have grub lie to it to make it boot from slaves.
3) Add a section similar to the one(s) that boot your current kernel, but change (hd0,<whatever>) to (hd1,<probably something different>). See the grub manual (run "info grub").
I use around 15 GB for my non-personal files on my debian system. Allowing for a bit of variance, I'd say 20 GB per distro is enough for most. Multiplying, you get a 160 to 200 GB disk.
Also, by trying out many distros, do you have enough time to spend on each distro to really judge it? I'm just saying you should consider this--I haven't tried anything like it, so I won't know whether or not it's a good idea.
Assuming that you're not going to run multiple distros simultaneously, no: using the same swap partition for all distros is a safe (and good!) optimization, AFAICT.
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.