On Sun, 2005-10-09 at 00:25 +1000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Just for fun, I'm trying out a whole bunch of different Linux > distributions, to compare them to see which I like best. > > I have an old PC with a 13GB drive with Mandrake 9.0 installed. > This drive is /dev/hda. /dev/hda6 is the swap space. > > I have added a 250GB drive (/dev/hdb) and created about 20 partitions. > I made /dev/hdb1 a primary partition of 1GB size, and called it boot. > hdb5-hdb23 are each 12GB logical partitions, intended to try various > distros. > hdb24 is a 21GB partition to be a (shared across distro) home drive. > > All of these are ext3 partitions. I've set hdb5-23 (all the > "distro-drives", if I can call them that) to have a different > forced-fsck count based on the number of times it's been mounted, not > based on the number of days since last boot. > > In contrast, the home partition is set to have a forced-fsck time based > on days, since it will be shared. > > I have also given a disk label to each "distro-drive" - e.g. the > mandrake one has a label of MANDRAKE and I've changed its fstab to > mount LABEL=MANDRAKE to /. > > Anyway, my real question is, what's a good way to set up the boot > process? If I'm going to have say about 12 different distros, what's a > good way to do this. > > Normally I just install the system into its own partition, and set up > suitable mount points so each system can see the others, and use lilo, > and add an entry for each kernel I want to boot up. That's going to be > a bit painful, since I'll have to copy the /etc/fstab and > /etc/lilo.conf to each system, with appropriate tweaks to the lilo.conf > on each one for its root ... wait, no, I can use a symlink of / to, say, > /fedora on the fedora system or / to /mandrake on the mandrake system, > so I can in fact use the same lilo.conf on each. (At least, if I leave > /boot within /, not a separately mounted filesystem.) > > Then I only have one line in each fstab to change (the root mount > point). > > But I was initially thinking if I put all the kernels into a separate > /boot partition, it'd all be much easier. The trouble is that each > distro is going to assume that /boot belongs to it, and feel free to > overwrite vmlinuz and System.map etc. > > I just now finished a Ubuntu install. It installs Grub as the boot > loader (no option not to). I was pleased to see that it detected > Mandrake 9 installed on another partition and offered to keep that and > add the Ubuntu as an alternative boot, so I let it do that. > Unfortunately the system now fails to boot (GRUB loading stage 1.5 and > leads to Error 21). > > I wasn't going to use Grub since I don't know of a way to check that a > grub config is correct, except to reboot to see what happens. SO I > can't say I'm surprised. While lilo is less powerful than grub, it > seems much safer. You always know where you stand. The following URL may suggest ways that you could use GRUB http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/grub/grub.htm I could not make any detailed suggestion before trying it out myself but I think you could start by trying a GRUB boot floppy and then installing it to the HDD later. Cheers, Ken
> Anyway, I'll rescue the system and re-install lilo into the MBR and > then proceed. But any suggestions to make this easier would be welcome. > > FWIW, the systems I'm planning to install are Ubuntu, Fedora core 4, > knoppix, gnoppix, debian, yos, slackware 10.2, xandros, linspire, maybe > lycoris and maybe gentoo too. > > BTW, is there a good graphical installer for debian? I got halfway > through installing it in a text installer when it presented me with the > configuration of ALL the kernel modules in text mode, and at that point > I scrubbed it and moved on to install Mandrake 9 instead. (Yes, I know > Ubuntu is Debian, but I meant a vanilla debian with point and click > install.) > > luke > -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
