Slack and suse dual boot. boot error
 

I ahve been using suse for a while now and i wanted to give slack 10.2 a try. I installed it onto hdb1, with suse / on hda1 and /disk2 on hda3, with the swap on hda2. Slack shares the swap partition. I did not install the Lilo boot loader when installing slack, because i thought i could add it in my grub bootloader in yast in suse. i kept the default vmlinuz kernel for slack. i set grub up for suse as default, and slack with the the kernel at /slackware (where i mounted hdb1) at /slackware/boot/vmlinuz. the intitial RAM disk at /boot/initrd and the root device /dev/hdb1.
then save the settings and shutdown. On reboot i selected slackware for my grub list and i got a paraising error. with 'press any key to continue' i then booted into suse. tried it again but noluck.

Does anyone dual with suse and slack?


Thanks Ryan

Yes, I have a multiboot system with SuSE and Slackware. However, I am not trying to boot Slackware with the SuSE Grub, and I don't even know if it is possible. Instead I use a chainloader configuration, with Grub calling Lilo when I select Slackware.

My configuration looks like so:


<SuSE 10.0 /boot/grub/menu.ls>

Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Do Okt 6 04:56:12 CEST 2005

color white/blue black/light-gray
default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd0,4)/message

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title SUSE LINUX 10.0
root (hd0,4)
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/hda6 vga=0x317 selinux=0 resume=/dev/hda2 splash=silent showopts
initrd /initrd

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title Slackware 10.2
chainloader (hd0,8)+1

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: floppy###
title Diskette
root (fd0)
chainloader +1

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- SUSE LINUX 10.0
root (hd0,4)
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/hda6 vga=normal showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off noresume selinux=0 nosmp noapic maxcpus=0 edd=off 3
initrd /initrd


<SuSE 10.0 /boot/grub/menu.ls>


In Slackware I use an automatically generated /etc/lilo.conf with a manually added section for kernel 2.6.13:

[...]
Linux bootable partition config begins
image = /boot/vmlinuz-generic-2.6.13
initrd = /boot/initrd.gz
root = /dev/hda9
label = Linux2613
read-only
# Linux bootable partition config ends
[...]


As far as I remember I installed LILO to my /root partition, not as MBR, but I'm not sure.
The only difficult part is counting the partitions right in Grub's menu.lst. I strongly suggest that you read the relevant section in the SuSE manual. Just type 'help' and Return on the command line as a normal user. In KDE a Konqueror window should open with a search engine. Search for Grub.

Hope that helps.

gargamel

I understand your favourite solution would be using grub as bootloader, so consider this as a spare solution.
I have Slackware installed on my second hard drive (second ide channel slave) together with Suse.
Suse has been installed without any bootloader, so I created a mount point on Slackware (/suse) where I mounted the Suse /boot partition b4 updating Slackware's Lilo.
My lilo.conf looks lke

# Linux bootable partition config begins
image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = /dev/hdb3
label = Linux-2.6.13.4
read-only
image = /suse/boot/vmlinux-suse-bla-bla
root = /dev/hdb6
initrd = /suse/boot/initrd-suse-bla-bla
label = Suse
read-only
# Linux bootable partition config ends

Hope this helps
Ciao

I have Grub calling for Slackware at
/boot/vmlinuz
and no initrd.

thanks for posting this it helped me out. only thing I did differently was to:

-slackware install it's own lilo to the partition that slackware sits on.
-in suse made folder "/mnt/slak" and then told the lilo in suse to load the "/mnt/slak/boot/vmlinuz" and I got it working.
-also in suse's lilo under the section for slackware i added "read-only"

thanks again.