Re: how to install 2 linux(es) on a PC?

[greg <gmott@ntlworld.com>]

On Wed, 2003-11-05 at 21:17, jbrown105@speedymail.org wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Nov 2003 00:00:59 -0800 (PST), "terry white" said:
> > on "11-4-2003" "Jim C. Brown" writ:
> > : Which partitions are the 2 linuxes installed on? (I assume you installed them
> > : on separate partitions, for obvious reasons they can't be installed onto the
> > : same partition.)
> > 
> > ... i don't see why not.  given 'one' partition, create two file systems,
> 
> Also, AFAIK Lilo can only be made to select booting of PARTITIONS, so to
> be able to boot the 2 linuxes with Lilo, they'd have to be on separate
> partitions. If i'm wrong
> please correct me. I don't know anything about GRUB so that might be
> different.
> 
> In any case, we are agreed: the 2 linuxes must at least be on separate
> file systems.
> 
> > and make each distribution, descndant from the 'root' of each

it is perfectly reasonable and common to have various bootable OS's on a
disk, each in its own partition/filesystem.

and it is perfectly reasonable and common to have various bootable
kernels in any partition, which can be selected for booting by either
lilo or grub.

but the term operating system does properly refer to more than just the
kernel, indeed including that broad set of libraries and utilities that
live throughout the filesystem.

since many if not most of those utilities are expected to be at a
certain location (pathname), it is reasonable and usual to have "just
one operating system" per filesystem.

although i could imagine having more than one, if the bootup procedure
somewhere executed a "chroot", thus delineating a filesystem within a
filesystem.  but it would be difficult to imagine wanting to bother to
make such a setup actually work.

> On Tue, Nov 04, 2003 at 03:17:44AM +0000, vick Julius wrote:
> > I installed 2 Linux flavors (red Hat and mandrake) on my machine and I 
> > could not boot both of them. I mean in grub (or lilo) I could not have 
> > choice of the 2 Linuxes?
> > Did someone install two linuxes on the same PC?
> > What should I do to have this luxury?

i am presuming you installed them on separate partitions.  the installer
for redhat (and probably also for mandrake, tho i'm not familiar with
it) has the ability to setup a chainload to the previously installed
operating system.  if you didn't make use of that feature at install
time, you would have a situation where you can only boot to whichever
one you installed last.

you can still add in the other one to the list of choices to be booted
by either lilo or grub.

one way is to setup a chainload to the other partition.  in order for
this to work, that other partition must have a working boot record. 
grub can be setup to work in this way, i don't know about lilo.

the other way instead of chainload is for either grub or lilo to
directly specify the location of the kernel to be booted in the other
partition.  to know the particulars of the boot command line to be given
for that kernel, look at the grub.conf or lilo.conf of that system.

in order to look, all you have to do is mount that other partition.