About Mixed Multiboot
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| the_new_z Apr 20, 2006 4:59 PM EDT |
So...the topic is about mixed multiboot by which I mean booting different OSes (Win, Linux, BSD, etc.) on one comp. So far I have only dualbooted XP and SUSE. Personally, my aim now is to get XP, SUSE, and 2 other distros, which I will change frequently, just to taste the different flavours. I have done some reading on the topic and I am more or less aware of the basics, but I decided to discuss it here before I actually get on with it. I found some discrepancies in what I have read concerning the place of Win. Some say that it must be installed first in order everything to work. Others say this is not necessary if you hide the other partitions so Win doesn't see them. Any opinions on this? Next, how should I approach the partitioning? Is it better to partition the disk beforehand with something like Partition Magic or should I do it as I progress with the instalations? Also what is a reasonable partition table for my plan? Is it possible and reasonable to share the same /home for all Linux distros? If not - what is a better idea? Last but not least, how about GRUB? Do I install it in the MBR or in /boot? Do I install GRUB for every distro or just for the first one and edit it to add the other OSes? Well, these are the vague spots that are troubling me at the moment. Maybe others will pop up in the course of the discussion. Maybe this topic will turn into a nice guide eventually. |
| salparadise Apr 20, 2006 9:54 PM EDT |
It is possible to install Windows after Linux, but Windows will no be happy. I've installed Windows onto partition D: and all the icons were missing from the Explorer tree and it took ages to open some stuff.
Ideally, but not legally, Windows first. I usually have one /home partition that all other installed distros use. This works fine (with the one draw back that before long you have a dozen or so folders in /home and it takes ages to find anything). People tend to disagree on such things. Some will say itś OK others will say not. GRUB - Install it with the first distro and then manually edit the menu.list file for subsequent additions. You can also edit grub entries before the system has booted up (though, editś made in this way are session specific only). I helped myself to learn grub by installing it and then deleting the menu.list file so I had to type the entries one by one, (also itś a great form of security, if you turn on Dadś computer while heś out thinking to sneak online, you get nowhere fast when presented with the word GRUB on the screen and a prompt and nothing else). |
| jdixon Apr 21, 2006 5:20 AM EDT |
Windows will overwrite your MBR when you install it. If you install your boot loader into the MBR, you'll have to reinstall it if you've installed Linux first. |
| SFN Apr 21, 2006 5:53 AM EDT |
Quoting:Ideally, but not legally, Windows first. I actually did a double-take after closing my browser. Have I been completely out of the loop on this? Is there something in Microsoft's EULA that prohibits dual booting? |
| salparadise Apr 21, 2006 6:35 AM EDT |
Nope, Just ol' sal abusing the English language again. Apologies for being misleading. |
| jimf Apr 21, 2006 6:35 AM EDT |
Quoting:Is there something in Microsoft's EULA that prohibits dual booting? Not to my knowledge, it's just another of Windows wonderful 'features'. |
| SFN Apr 21, 2006 9:49 AM EDT |
Oh, OK. Well, "damn", actually. That would have been great for the "and ANOTHER thing about MS" box. |
| the_new_z Apr 21, 2006 12:39 PM EDT |
So the steps I should take are in this order: 1. Install XP 2. Install 1st distro with GRUB in the MBR. 3. Install 2nd distro without GRUB and add it to the menu.list of the 1st distro's GRUB. Also share the same /home with the 1st distro. 4. Install 3rd distro just as the 2nd. One thing that bothers me about sharing the same /home for all distros is that even if I do this, I still have to install all the apps separately for each distro, right? But then how does this work with the different configuration files all stored in the same /home? |
| tuxtom Apr 21, 2006 5:47 PM EDT |
new_z: That is something that always bothered me, as well. Theoretically it should not matter too much, unless the user-specific application settings differed for the same app on multiple distros. For example, say I use KDE on two of those installed distros...the user files for KDE should work for both. But, what if there is a KDE version difference? What if the config is just a "little bit" different? I suppose one could override the home directory location for user files for each distro, but what a PITA. Even though I have a few distros installed, I RARELY boot into anything but my default (MEPIS), so the point is moot. ( I hate to admit that I re-installed XP on a spare hard drive so I could get up-to-speed on some C#/.NET development. Call me a sell-out all you want...you don't have to pay back my student loans...and probably don't have to pay San Diego rent/gas prices. There is Mono. ) |
| hkwint Apr 26, 2006 12:06 AM EDT |
About the BSD part: I didn't have succes booting that with Lilo, so I recommend GRUB for doing so. Please consider NetBSD had a serious bug mounting FAT partitions the las time I used it (2-3 years ago maybe). About the Windows/first disk thing: If I remember well, you can make a second disk pretend to be the first, thereby 'fooling' Windows, as far as I know. See http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Dual_boot#Multi_Drive_Install |
| incinerator Apr 26, 2006 5:54 AM EDT |
Unfortunately, /home/username also stores lots of application's config data for that user. For different distros, desktop applications might have different versions or be completely different (e.g. gnome instead of kde) If I were you, I would only share certain parts of the home directory, like /home/documents for instance. Make an extra partition for that and add it to /etc/fstab for every distro you install. If you encounter application config files you can really share between install, you could simply move that file somewhere into /home/documents/configs/ for instance and then create symlinks at the original place. This approach is very simplistic and you will need to cater for per-user solutions once there is more than one user using that computer. |
| number6x Apr 26, 2006 6:04 AM EDT |
new_z, sharing the same home among different distros is not a good idea, unless you are an expert in confog files for every app you use. Theoretically it is possible, but in practice it will lead to errors. If two distros use different versions ofany app like Open Office, K3B, or what ever app you choose, the config files in your home directory may or may not be compatible. The differences may leave one or both versions of any apps useless. If you write some shell scripts to back up all config files on logoff, and load the correct ones that match the apps for the distro you are booting you won't have any problems. Or you could use apt or yast or rpm or emerge to ensure that you are always using the same versions of any apps in each of your distros. Or you could just keep seperate home directories for each distro and keep a seperate, but shared 'data' directory that gets mounted under your home directory. I usually use the shared data drive approach. Fewer headaches. |
| salparadise Apr 26, 2006 6:18 AM EDT |
If you use different login names for each distro then these problems go away. And one new problem arises - in the end you have a /home dir that's stuffed with user dirs from each distro you try and then one day some bright spark says "remember that file you downloaded last month...". You can set 1 user to download emails and all the rest to "leave messages on server" so you don't lose emails. You can have 1 music/film dir and symlink it to each new user dir you make. It's easy and do-able, it just takes a little thought. |
| the_new_z Apr 26, 2006 11:02 AM EDT |
Thank you for the advice, guys. I'll go with a separate /home for my main distro (SUSE) and for the rest I will have only /. Concerning GRUB, I'll try installing it only with the first distro and using it for the others, too. We'll see what happens soon. |
| number6x Apr 26, 2006 11:54 AM EDT |
new_z, I have found that mepis and ubuntu/kubuntu are pretty good at detecting other os's and setting up a good grub based boot menu. suse has an advanced option that scans all of the drives /boot/grub/menu.lst and produces a monster boot menu. But then you have lots of multiple duplicate entries. it just combines the various entries from all of the various menu.lst files. When you play with it a little you'll see what I mean. If you are a point and click person, suse lets you edit everything in yast. If you just want to do it fast, use a debian based distro that does a good other os detection to generate your menu.lst, edit in vi, and run the command "update-grub" after you save your edited menu.lst. -Sean |
| jimf Apr 26, 2006 12:04 PM EDT |
Quoting:use a debian based distro that does a good other os detection Including Debian itself. |
| number6x Apr 26, 2006 12:33 PM EDT |
jimf, yes, good point. The suse yast method is simplistic if you know nothing about grub, but if you have a lot of distros on one machine yast is very annoying. click,click,click,edit,save,confirm.click,click,click,edit,save,confirm.click,click,click,edit,save,confirm. click,click,click,edit,save,confirm.click,click,click,edit,save,confirm... times each OS, deleting and confirming the deletion of all of the duplicates. very, very annoying. Its much easier to read up on grub and choose the suse/yast option to edit the files by hand. or just do a debian distro last, let it detect everything and be done with it. |
| jimf Apr 26, 2006 12:52 PM EDT |
The one thing I have about the auto rewrite of of menu.lst is that the formatting is ehh.. 'sloppy'. I have to give Mepis credit here. If you want to see a really clean example of how an auto-write of menu.lst 'should look' on a multiboot look at the Mepis one... Actually, editing the grub menu.list is easy enough so that anyone, who has seen a good example, should be able to do it themselves. Just remember to leave one empty carriage return at the end of file. |
| salparadise Apr 26, 2006 9:23 PM EDT |
The problem with the MEPIS bootloader (and I haven't yet tried the new version) is that you can't edit the entries on the fly. On most GRUBS you can highlight a line and press e and grub allows you to edit the line. Mepis doesn't allow this. |
| jimf Apr 26, 2006 10:05 PM EDT |
huh?... Just use a text editor, kwrite, kedit, or whatever on /boot/grub/menu.lst :). |
| salparadise Apr 27, 2006 2:11 AM EDT |
On Debian (as an example) when the boot menu appears when the machine is first powered up - you can edit the menu entries and then boot from the edited entry. Use Arrow keys to highlight an entry and press e, you can then delete lines, add lines or just edit existing lines. The only thing being, whatever edits you make at this level don't write to menu.lst.
So, if you manually added a distro to menu.lst but got the syntax slightly wrong you can edit then boot without needing to use a different distro or a boot cd. This cannot be done on Mepis. (The last version I used was 3.4 - the most recent full release). This is not a criticism, merely an observation. |
| number6x Apr 27, 2006 5:04 AM EDT |
jimf, I think if you set up mepis to use the non-graphical boot, it works just like grub should and you can edit. Its the way mepis wraps the graphics on top of grub that hides the ability to line edit during boot. That feature is built into grub. Maybe switching to the ubuntu based distro will bring that back to mepis. Warren still does a pretty good job, but he hasn't matched libranet yet. :) |
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