[SOLVED] Lilo set-up to dual boot Slackware 12.2 with Slackware64 -current?

rworkman · 08-03-2009, 02:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stroker

I'm going to give 64 a try and this thread has been very helpful. I have some questions about the /home partition.

Can't this cause conflicts? I'm especially referring to dot files, like kde configs. What happens to them when you are booting two different version, e.g. kde3.x and kde4.x on the same /home?

I'm thinking I'd like a separate clean /home for testing 64 with kde4.

Any thoughts or advice appreciated.

Yes, it *could* cause issues, especially with kde. YMMV. :-)

niels.horn · 08-03-2009, 02:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stroker

I'm going to give 64 a try and this thread has been very helpful. I have some questions about the /home partition.

Can't this cause conflicts? I'm especially referring to dot files, like kde configs. What happens to them when you are booting two different version, e.g. kde3.x and kde4.x on the same /home?

I'm thinking I'd like a separate clean /home for testing 64 with kde4.

Any thoughts or advice appreciated.

It works quite well actually! I switch back-and-forth mostly between Slack32-current & Slack64-current on this machine.
I only encountered some very minor issues with a Firefox complement, but I have been able to create a workaround with a little bash-script.
Ah, and I don't use KDE but Xfce.

The rest (desktop, favorites, configurations, etc.) is transparent between the versions. But, as always, YMMV!

<edit>
Robby beat me again

But we agree on the last sentence!
</edit>

GrapefruiTgirl · 08-03-2009, 10:30 PM

Blah!! Looks like I ought to switch to one of you guys's nice simple ways of doing the dual boot, instead of the (in retrospect) weird way that I do it:

I run LILO from Slackware 11 (hda5) but I have Slack64 on (hda11) and what I have done from the beginning is build my Slack64 kernel, mount hda5 on /mnt/somewhere, copy my new Slack64 kernel over to /mnt/somewhere/boot, then chroot into /mnt/somewhere, edit /mnt/somewhere/etc/lilo.conf and finally, run LILO and exit chroot.

Whew! It works fine, but what a rigamarole compared to the nice methods above

Sasha

brianL · 08-04-2009, 04:15 AM

Like I said, I got my method from saikee, who has a black belt in booting. He is a LQ member, but has a page or two or more on all aspects of booting at Justlinux forums:
http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?t=144294

GrapefruiTgirl · 08-10-2009, 05:31 AM

I inadvertently made a nifty 'discovery' the other day..
My Slack64 root is /dev/hda11 and my Slack11 system is on /dev/hda5--

I (accidentally) added a freshly built Slack64 kernel to my lilo.conf the other day, but (here's the accident) I put it in a previously written "image" section which was for booting my Slack11-32bit system. I ran lilo and rebooted.

To my surprise, the 64bit kernel booted my 32bit Slackware

which at the time surprised me!

The point: for me anyhow, this alleviates the need to have a more complicated lilo setup than I already have, and eliminates the need for the chroot I had been doing.

Ultimately I should have not been so surprised: I select the kernel64 compile option which allows the kernel to be compatible with 32bit programs & libs, so this behavior is expected.

Anyway, maybe this will also help others simplify booting multiple distros, of either bit-width, with the same kernel.

Sasha