Hi guys, just want to ask can I install redhat and mandrake on the same HDD ?

back again? you going to play nicely this time? good...

it should be pretty trivial to install both, as long as you leave enough space unsued on the drive for the second distro then when you install the second distro the installer should pick up the other one no problem, and set up the boot loader for both. last time i compared them the mandrake installer was cleverer than redhat's so i'd recommend installing mandrake second. you should also be fine to use a common /home partition as well.

I love linux now.
I bought a 60 GB hdd, installed first with Windows ME, then linux mandrake 9.0.
And now my HDD still got 7 GB unused, I plan to install REDhat 8.0, any problem ?

redhat wipe off my mandrake, the lilo can not boot.
i installed redhat on free space, mandrake resides on another space, however, redhat format the swap file of mandrake, and all things gone!

that sucks. rh should have been installed first, then mandy. rh wouldn't have installed it's own bootloader unless you told it too, which overwrote grub into the mbr. this time around, install mandy last.

Cool

Good thing to do is to install boot managers (lilo or grub) on its linux partitions and another one in mbr (old "boot magic" versions could be found price-free). You can then install any new system with its own boot loader config, and manually add it to mbr boot man in less then 30 s.
Single swap partition is enough.
I have Win(95,XP) ; (RedHat, Caldera, Debian)GNU/Linux & GNU/HURD. Works fine.

the bootloader of mandy is LILO,
so, for redhat, i shall choose LILO or Grub ?

you could choose neither bootloader for the RedHat part, or install it onto the RedHat partition (i.e. /dev/hda3 if that is your RedHat partition). I have had success with installing 2 versions of RedHat sharing the same swap partition. It was not complicated at all. You did mean swap partition and not swap file right?

You may want to post your hd layout, that would help out.

i.e.
/dev/hda1 = <OS> = <#>GB = <partition type 82, 83, etc..>
/dev/hda2 = ???
/dev/hda3 = ???
/dev/hda4 = ???
...
...

how about if i choose to create boot disk?
will it make my mbr intact ?

creating a boot disk will only create a floppy (3 1/2") disk that can boot the O/S from which it was created. This is a good deal when you have a PC that is shared by technical (Linux-geeks) and non-technical (Windows drones) users. That way, if you turn on the system with no boot disk inserted, it boots right into windows happily. If you insert the boot disk, then you get Linux.

I suppose if you wanted to, you could get Mandy installed and working, then install RedHat with the option to create a boot disk, but not place a boot loader on the HD at all. Then if you wanted RH, you just pop in the disk and voila!

hi guys, how about i want to install SUSE as well , my 60GB HDD is vast, many spaces!

lets tackle one problem at a time, here.

You gotta learn to crawl before you can walk.

Judging by some of your posts, I would venture to guess that you are a newbie. The distros have their minor differences, but overall, they are about the same. I would just learn the basics of one distro before trying another.

If you want to learn Linux quickly, then spend alot of time at www.tldp.org - These howtos are usually written so that a noob can pick them up and figure them out quickly.

I completely agree, sorta.

I think learning how to walk before you run is one thing, but tri-installing is no harder than dual. So it's not necessarily a step forward as much as a side step...

As for the boot disk idea, yeah it works, but it doesn't really teach you how to edit/use your bootloader. It teaches you how to slide in a floppy. I'd say take a bootloader, figure it out, learn how to manipulate it so you can boot all your OS/distros, that's learning how to walk.



Cool

yeah,
i am too hasty,

actually i prefer mandrake, but since i got also the redhat CDs, and my HDD is vast, i plan to install redhat too.........