Various Distributions on Same HD?

albeej · 12-08-2002, 02:54 PM

Can you have more than one distribution on the same drive at the same time? Is this worthwhile? Thanks. John

neo77777 · 12-08-2002, 03:13 PM

Ask this member http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...o&userid=10773
I believe he wouldn't mind answering you

bulliver · 12-08-2002, 03:40 PM

Heh heh, yeah it's possible. You are only limited by your HD size. As for whether it's worthwhile, you have to decide yourself. Do you want to keep one "main" distro then try a number of others to see if you like them? If so it is worthwhile.

MasterC · 12-08-2002, 04:54 PM

I do it. I like it. I have Mandrake, 2 slack's, LFS, and XP, spread across 2 hard drives, randomly.

1 of the slacks is my main distro, Mandy is for helpin people out who run RPM distros and Mandy specifically, LFS is hopefully someday going to be my main distro if I ever get the time to install a few necessary things. XP is on there to mock me,

Not really, I have XP on there for troubleshooting, to see if there is a problem if it's OS specific, and also for P2P since I can't find a linux client that is as good as Grokster.

Yes, it is definitely worth while, and sometimes helps to fix problems that I create

Cool

whansard · 12-08-2002, 04:55 PM

i've got a bazillion distros too. several in different
partitions, and about 10 in one partition. I learn new
stuff from each distro. A lot of times i can't get some
software to work in one, so i'll try it in several others.
i've got several scripts where i can run several of
them without rebooting. there are a few multi-linux
howto's on the web. Do a search.

bulliver · 12-08-2002, 05:04 PM

Quote:

i've got several scripts where i can run several of them without rebooting

How did you pull that off? Do you just share 1 kernel and chroot? I didn't think it was possible to change kernels without rebooting.

MasterC · 12-08-2002, 05:15 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by whansard
i've got a bazillion distros too. several in different
partitions, and about 10 in one partition.

10 in one partition? That's gotta be pretty rough specifying the different /bin's and and libs to each program to do that. Again, how would you do something like that, you chrooting again here? And hot-swapping kernels, I've heard from a reliable source this is pretty much a no-go, and not worth it to make it a go. Some SMP machines were tested with this supposedly, and it was successful, but totally not worth the work to do it, and it's just as easy to reboot.

I would really be interested in how you do it, and maybe even a pick at the script mentioned above.

Cool

unSpawn · 12-08-2002, 05:36 PM

/me visions a queue forming here :-]
Yeah, plz show us how you do the scripts n stuff hot swap distro hopping thingie...

whansard · 12-08-2002, 06:03 PM

here's one of the magic spells
Some of them are a little different.
actually all of them are different,
but i think you'll get it

umount /hda1
umount /hda2
mount /dev/hda10 /mnt/knoppix
mount --bind /proc /mnt/knoppix/knoppix/source/proc
mount --bind /tmp /mnt/knoppix/knoppix/source/tmp
chroot /mnt/knoppix/knoppix/source bash --login
# killall esd
umount /mnt/knoppix/knoppix/source/tmp
umount /mnt/knoppix/knoppix/source/proc
sleep 1s
umount /mnt/knoppix
mount /dev/hda1 /hda1
mount /dev/hda2 /hda2

whansard · 12-08-2002, 06:07 PM

oh sorry, same kernel my preciousss kernel.
i'm gettin really tired.

i guess the knoppix one is a bad example

umount /hda1
umount /hda2
mount /dev/hda6 /mnt/peanut
mount --bind /proc /mnt/peanut/proc
mount --bind /tmp /mnt/peanut/tmp
chroot /mnt/peanut bash --login
umount /mnt/peanut/tmp
umount /mnt/peanut/proc
umount /mnt/peanut
mount /dev/hda1 /hda1
mount /dev/hda2 /hda2

whansard · 12-08-2002, 06:26 PM

here's an extra nasty;

start your version of x,
then go out to a terminal,
and do all the chroot stuff like above,
then startx -- :1
and you'll probably be running both x's at once.
one under control-alt-f7, the other on control-alt-f8
when i first set up this big mess up i started up
5 different ones. X's from different distros running
from f7-f11.

rivang · 12-12-2002, 09:21 AM

MasterC and others...

What are your partitioning schemes for running multiple distributions on one hard drive?

I want to setup a box like this to try Slackware, SuSE, Red Hat, Debian, Gentoo, OpenBSD and keep one for WinME or WinXP for things you can't do in Linux or BSD yet.

whansard · 12-12-2002, 09:52 AM

this is mine
Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 10011 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 260 2088418+ 6 FAT16
/dev/hda2 1000 2500 12056782+ c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda3 8001 10011 16153357+ c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda4 2501 8000 44178750 85 Linux extended
/dev/hda5 2501 3200 5622718+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 3201 3400 1606468+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda7 3401 3600 1606468+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda8 3601 4300 5622718+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda9 4301 4999 5614686 83 Linux
/dev/hda10 5000 8000 24105501 83 Linux
Partition table entries are not in disk order

notice the type 85 linux extended? its for getting widnows to ignore it. If i use a regular extended
type 5, i think windows will sit around trying to choke
on it. also, see the apparently unused space from
cylinder 261 to 999? Thats where i keep openbsd,
netbsd, and freebsd. like freebsd is from 261 to
599, so if i want to use it, i remove entry 3 in the partition
table and add back an entry for cylinder 261 through
599, make it type a5, i think. I would have to go look.
and then reboot to it. think its an ugly thing to do, but
its the only way i could figure to have access to my whole
drive from every os, and have those bsd's on one hard
disk. Its been that way for 2 years, and i haven't lost
the stuff yet. Its backed up to cdrw's anyway. I don't
have time to type the names of all the os's in there, but
its a lot.

MasterC · 12-12-2002, 02:12 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by rivang
MasterC and others...

What are your partitioning schemes for running multiple distributions on one hard drive?

I want to setup a box like this to try Slackware, SuSE, Red Hat, Debian, Gentoo, OpenBSD and keep one for WinME or WinXP for things you can't do in Linux or BSD yet.

That's a pretty impressive lineup, you really don't need alot of space unless you are going to install X on each one, along with a lot of bloated programs. Anywhere, here's my latest scheme:

Code:

Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 4866 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *         1       522   4192933+   b  Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda2           523      4867  34895931    5  Extended
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary:
     phys=(1023, 87, 21) should be (1023, 254, 63)
/dev/hda5           523      1907  11124981   83  Linux
/dev/hda6          1908      3279  11020527   83  Linux
/dev/hda7          3280      4867  12750265+  83  Linux

Disk /dev/hdb: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 2498 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdb1   *         1       814   6538423+  83  Linux
/dev/hdb2           815      2499  13527796+   5  Extended
/dev/hdb5           815      1464   5221093+  83  Linux
/dev/hdb6          1852      2499   5198031    b  Win95 FAT32
/dev/hdb7          1465      1851   3108546   83  Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

I know very little about extended and primary, logical things. I didn't even pay attention to that when setting up my scheme, and have had no problems since then.

Oh, and here's my fstab so you can see where each is mounted and such:

Code:

root@masterc:~# cat /etc/fstab
/dev/hda5        /            ext3        defaults                1  1
/dev/hda6        /home        ext3        defaults                1  2
/dev/hda7        /mnt/lfs     ext3        defaults                1  2
/dev/hdb1        /Debian      ext3        defaults                1  2
/dev/hdb5        /Mandy       ext3        defaults                1  2
/dev/hdb7        /Mandy/home  ext3        defaults                1  2
/dev/hda1        /mnt/windows vfat        users,auto,rw,umask=000 1  0
/dev/hdb6        /mnt/fat32   vfat        users,auto,rw,umask=000 1  0
/dev/cdrom       /mnt/cdrom   iso9660     noauto,users,owner,ro   0  0
/dev/cdrom2      /mnt/cdrom2  auto        noauto,users,owner,ro   0  0
/dev/fd0         /mnt/floppy  auto        noauto,owner            0  0
/dev/sda1        /mnt/sony    auto        noauto,users,rw         0  0
none             /dev/pts     devpts      gid=5,mode=620          0  0
none             /proc        proc        defaults                0  0
root@masterc:~#

Hope that helps a bit.

Cool

bigjohn · 12-12-2002, 02:19 PM

Whoosh - that's the noise of this thread going straight over my head. I have enough of a problem trying to learn one distro, let alone all the other one's!!!

Merry Christmas all

regards

John