quad-booting

engineuity · March 7th, 2005, 10:47 PM

I see that multi boot has been discussed, but i guess its not dumbed down enough for me

. I would like to get win2k, debian, opendarwin, and fc3/suse/mandrake/slackware (one of the 4) installed on my comp. I have a 30 gig hdd (27.95gig actually). I already have win2k installed freshly from the other night on the first partition of 6.99gigs. The rest is all unallocated. In other multiboot scenarios, they say to keep the linux /boot sector in the first 1024 cycles and that you can stick just the /boot there and the rest of your distro or whatever anywhere else on the hdd. How can i stick all my boot directories for the other distros within this 1024 cycle? Partition sizes (already 6.99 gig used for windows)? I dont remember debian asking me where i wanted to mount certain directories...does this have to be done after its all set up, like just moving /boot to hda2

the jester · March 8th, 2005, 06:27 AM

erm not so difficult depending which bootloader you want to use - I've never messed around with boot.ini and have very limited experience with lilo but here is a copy of my grub.conf

Code:

default 0
timeout 30
splashimage=(hd2,0)/boot/grub/gentoo.xpm.gz

title=gentoo 2.6.10
kernel (hd2,0)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sdc3 elevator=cfq video=vesafb:ywrap,mtrr vga=0x31A splash=verbose,theme:emergence
initrd (hd2,0)/fbsplash-gentoo-1280x1024

title=gentoo nitro2
kernel (hd2,0)/boot/bzImage-nitro2 root=/dev/sda2 elevator=cfq video=vesafb:ywrap,mtrr vga=0x31A splash=verbose,theme:emergence
#initrd=/boot/initrd-1280x1024

title=Win2k
root (hd0,0)
chainloader (hd0,0)+1

title=sarge
kernel (hd2,0)/vmlinuz-2.6.0 root=/dev/sdd1

What you see there is
1. My main gentoo install on /dev/sdc3
2. An experiment with reiser4 on /dev/sda2
3. Win2k on /dev/sda1
4. Debian on /dev/sdd3

All kernels are stored in a common /boot on /dev/sdc1

Shared swap on /dev/sdc2

Unless you use SATA or SCSI you can redo all config to show /dev/hdx (where x = a for first drive, b for second, etc

You will probably have to opt for expert installation to be able to share /boot and swap

Hope that helps

engineuity · March 8th, 2005, 10:13 AM

Instead of writing a boot disk, i would write to whatever section of hdd that i want boot to be? So if i have these 3 other distros i want to install how big should that boot partitions be

the jester · March 8th, 2005, 11:10 AM

my boot on /dev/sdc1 is 100M and I have about 10 old kernels and various other cruft kicking around in there

typically a 2.6.x kernel (modules compiled in) will weigh in at 2M (YMMV)

the trick will be knowing your planned partition layout (maybe write it down to be sure) and understanding how your boot-manager of choice (grub/lilo/other) 'sees' the partitions

e.g. under grub /dev/hda1 = (hd0,0); /dev/hdb3 = (hd1,2)

finally make sure that you, not the installer, are in the driving seat when adding OSes

engineuity · March 8th, 2005, 05:32 PM

ok im gonna give it a shot tonight when i get out of class. Thanks!

engineuity · March 8th, 2005, 10:30 PM

OKAY!! As of current, I am dual booted with win2k and debian. Everything seemed pretty straightforward, debian asked if i wanted to install grub to the mbr and i said yes. Windows boots fine and so does debian. Woohoo!

engineuity · March 8th, 2005, 11:20 PM

edit: nevermind..fixed it

engineuity · March 9th, 2005, 03:41 AM

does anyone have experience installing OpenDarwin? I have a gig of space available for it but im not sure how the install works and whether itll destroy my working grub bootloader.