On Mon, 28 Feb 2005, Bo Grimes wrote:
Right now I have Linux on hdb3 and Windows 98 on hda1 with a FAT32 partition for Windows apps on hdb1. HDB2 is swap. I want to keep the 6 gig hda1 with Windows just for a few educational games my kids still use that wouldn't run on XP, but I want to use hdb1 for Gentoo.
This will work fine, grub can handle plenty of multiboot situations.
I have never put two versions of Linux on one computer. I want to keep hdb3 for my use while installing Gentoo on hdb1. Is this do-able? Are there any pitfalls to watch out for?
Well, one obvious pitfall is accidentally formatting the wrong partition (guilty of that ONCE, and ONCE only) =)
In my time of using linux, I've found the easiest way to multiboot different distributions is to share a common /boot between them all, where you put all your kernels into that partition, and have a single grub.conf for everything (Which can be managed from any of the distributions).
In my ideal partition scheme for multiple distros on hdb, with windows on hda I would have the following partition scheme:
Grub installed on the MBR of hda hda1 is a windows partition hdb1 /boot hdb2 SWAP hdb3 / for distro 1 hdb4 / for distro 2
Note that you can setup extended partitions if you want to break out /home and share that between distro's.
your grub.conf would be similar to:
default 0 timeout 10 splashimage=(hd1,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title=distro1 root (hd1,0) kernel /distro1-2.6.10 root=/dev/hdb3
title=distro2 root (hd1,0) kernel /distro2-2.6.8.1 root=/dev/hdb4
title=Windows root (hd0,0) chainloader +1
This method will scale up to as many drives and distro's as you can toss into the machine.
Hope this gets you on your way,
Christopher Fisk -- If you want to stay dad you've got to polish your image. I think the image we need to create for you is "repentant but learning". -- Calvin -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
