debian & fedora together

[Jim Cornette]

John Cox wrote:

>>>>>EXT2-fs warning (device hda3): ext2_fill_super: mounting ext3 filesystem
>>>>>as ext2

This sounds like Debian somehow does not detect your Fedora 
installations filesystem as ext3. Is there an entry in the grub file for 
this filesystem within the Debian installation?

>>>>>VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly
>>>>>Freeing unused kernel memory: 144k freed
>>>>>Warning: unable to open an initial console
>>>>>SELinux: Disabled at runtime.

This might be caused by Debian install having a different method to 
initialize the system that is related to the 2.4 kernel way of doing 
things. Fedora and the 2.6 kernel used to error in this way during early 
2.5 test kernel days. There are different initializing process between 
the two kernels. Your best bet is to chainload Fedora in a way similar 
to what is done to load fireign operating systems, DOS, windows, os/2 
and the like.

Using the first installation disk for Fedora, boot into rescue mode, 
then chroot /mnt/sysimage for the Fedora installation that should be 
found. Now, type grub-install /dev/hda3 and the Fedora Grub should be 
installed for the hda3 Fedora installation.

When booted into Debian,add this to your menu.lst file for the Debian 
grub. This should chainload (hand over process to the Fedora grub 
installation) and the Fedora boot menu should come up.

title Fedora
         rootnoverify (hd0,2)
         chainloader +1



>>>Debian:
>>>
>>>root (hd0,0)
>>>kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.27-1-386 root=/dev/hda1 ro
>>>initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.4.27-1-386
>>>savedefault
>>>boot
>>>
>>>Fedora Core3:
>>>
>>>root (hd0,2)
>>>kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667 ro root=LABEL=/1 rhgb quiet
>>>initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.9-1.667.img
>>>
>>>I tried changing the root=LABEL=/1 statement to root=/dev/hda3 to no avail. I
>>>am unfamiliar with the '=/1' after LABEL, although I believe LABEL refers to
>>>grub.conf on the Fedora partition.

LABEL=/1 should be root on the Fedora installation and equiv. to a 
/dev/hda3 entry. The LABEL=/ is probably your Debian installations label.
I assume that /dev/hda2 is a swap partition that is used for each 
installation.

>>>
>>>The rhgb and quiet stuff leaves me a little puzzled, but I suspect that will
>>>be revealed in the fullness of time as I suspect they have to do with the X
>>>stuff and not the disk stuff.

The Red Hat Graphical Boot Loader is the Fedora Boot screen that does 
use the GUI for its workings. The quiet entry suppresses the usual 
messages that the kernel usually displays on the terminal during boot.


John's other points about menu.lst and adding entries with an editor 
might work as well.

Jim


-- 
Johnson's law:
	Systems resemble the organizations that create them.