SuSE, FC & Windows multi-boot
 

I had installed Windows XP on hda1 & Fedora Core (FC) on hda2 & hda3.
I want to install SuSE 9.0 on an empty partition.

# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 15.0 GB, 15020457984 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1940 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 = 7741440 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 729 5511208+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 947 1854 6864480 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 1855 1940 650160 82 Linux swap

My plan is:
1. install SuSE 9.0 with the "new installation" option.
2. install to empty space 730 - 946.
3. create two partitions:
one for swap & one for /.
Is that hda4 & hda5?

4. Existing menu.lst is:
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,1)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu

title Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.667)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.9-1.667.img

title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

How to add the new boot title for SuSE 9.0 for triple boot with SuSE, Windows XP & FC?

You can use swap for both Linux systems (you can only run one at a time anyway). This way you don't need to create an extended partition (there is only room for 4 primary partitons, so you would need to create the extended partition hda4 and two logical partitions hda5 and hda6 for root and swap).
The menu.lst entry for SUSE would probably look like this:
EDIT: To be sure about this entry, tell YaST to install the bootloader on a floppy (instead of your HDD's MBR), then copy the entry from SUSE's /boot/grub/menu.lst to the one in your other system.

Like abisko00 said,
Its always a wise idea to do that,

But for you, this is my menu.lst,
Hope you get it right,
Good Luck.

I had already created two swap partitions for my first computer but following your advice, I created only one swap partition for my second computer.
How to eliminate the extra swap partition for my first computer?

I guess first you should point swap to the 'other' partition in /etc/fstab and reboot. Then you are free to delete the remaining swap partition and use it for something else.

My menu.lst for Fedora Core is:
title Fedora Core
root (hd0,4)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.9-1.667.img

When I boot into the fedora core partition, this error message appear:
mkrootdev: label / not found
mount: error 2 mounting ext3
mount: error 2 mounting none
switchroot: mount failed: 22
umount /initrd/dev failed: 2
Kernel panic -- not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

The computer hangs.

How to fix this problem?

Fedora Core is installed at hda5 & hda6:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 3213 25808391 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 4519 9726 41833260 f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda3 3214 3342 1036192+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda4 3343 4518 9446220 83 Linux
/dev/hda5 4519 4531 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 4532 9726 41728806 8e Linux LVM

Is FC using a extra /boot partition? hda5 seems a little small for the root filesystem.

Try to append root=/dev/hda6 (if this is the root filesystem) to the menu.lst entry.

If you are not using extra /boot, then probably hda6 harbours all of FC3. In this case you need to change 'root (hd0,4)' to 'root (hd0,5)' in order to point to hda6.

I tried this in the menu.lst file.
This got the same "mkrootdev: label / not found, ..." error.
title Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.667_hda6)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667 ro root=LABEL=/dev/hda6 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.9-1.667.img

This got the "file not found" error.
title Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.667_hda6hd0,5)
root (hd0,5)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.9-1.667.img

title Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.667_hda6hd0,5hda6)
root (hd0,5)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667 ro root=LABEL=/dev/hda6 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.9-1.667.img

If you do not have a /boot partition, the kernel is probably /boot/vmlinuz. That mean you are pointing grub to the wrong place. Also the option root=LABEL=/ seems a little strange (SUSE doesn't use 'LABEL'). Try 'root=/dev/hdaX' instead.

Try the following in the menu.lst and get a error message:
Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x8e.
...
Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition.

I guess we are back to the LVM issue. Still don't know how to solve that...