[Wylug-discuss] multi o/s loading

[Roger Leigh]

"Mike Maycock" <mike at skillstraining.freeserve.co.uk> writes:

> Could anyone help . I am trying to load, RedHat, Suse, and Lindows.
>
> What is the best order to do this.

Any order should be OK.  Make sure you partition your disk correctly
during the first install.  Given a single HDD, I'd suggest the
following:

10 MiB: /boot [hda1]
[put everything else in an extended partition on hda2]
128 MiB /root [RedHat, hda5]
128 Mib /root [SuSE, hda6]
128 MiB /root [Lindows, hda7]
xxx GiB everything else [LVM physical volume on hda8]

Now using pvcreate/vgcreate/lvcreate, you can create /home, /usr/local
as LVM logical volumes.  You should also put /usr and /var partitions
here for each distribution.  Using LVM, you can extend any of these
volumes should you run out of space, so leave some free space for
future expansion (use it as swap to give it a use).

Alternatively, just have a single partition for each distro, plus a
common /boot.  This is much simpler, but harder to share data between
the distributions.

When partitioning, you can have a common /home, /boot, /var/mail and
swap space etc.  By using a common /boot, you can have a unified
kernel image for all the systems.  I'd suggest GRUB for booting--make
sure you install it onto the /boot boot record and make this the
active partition.  You'll need to manage the kernel images manually,
so one distro doesn't mess things up.


HTH,
Roger

--
Roger Leigh

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