Installing other Linux distributions togheter with FC2

Phil Schaffner P.R.Schaffner at IEEE.org
Tue Nov 9 09:18:42 UTC 2004


On Tue, 2004-11-09 at 09:30 +0100, A. Lanza wrote:
> Hi list,
> 
> I get news about new distributions every month or so. I'd like to take a
> look at those, to compare them with FC, but I only have one single
> machine. Does anybody know if I can install another distributions
> togheter with my FC2 and decide which one to run at boot time? Or, will
> I need a different machine to do it?

Yes - grub does this nicely, although anaconda could do a better job of
helping you do it.

http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=124725

Providing multiple ~100MB primary partitions for /boot near the
beginning of the disk, or disks, for each distro helps.  Can even
share /boot between FC2 and FC3 if you upgrade e2fsprogs on FC2 to
handle new ext3 features from FC3 but this is a bit tricky.

Sample /boot/grub/grub.conf

# grub.conf modified by Phil Schaffner
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE:  You have a /boot partition.  This means that
#          all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
#          root (hd2,0)
#          kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hde7
#          initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd2,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
#hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core 3 rc5 (2.6.9-1.649)
	root (hd2,0)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.649 ro root=LABEL=/1
	initrd /initrd-2.6.9-1.649.img
title Fedora Core 3 Quiet (2.6.9-1.649)
	root (hd2,0)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.649 ro root=LABEL=/1 rhgb quiet
	initrd /initrd-2.6.9-1.649.img
title Fedora Core 2 (2.6.8-1.521.desktop.6)
	root (hd2,0)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.8-1.521.desktop.6 ro root=LABEL=/
	initrd /initrd-2.6.8-1.521.desktop.6.img
title Fedora Core 2 (2.6.8-1.521)
	root (hd2,0)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.8-1.521 ro root=LABEL=/
	initrd /initrd-2.6.8-1.521.img
title Fedora Core 2 (2.6.7-1.494.2.2)
	root (hd2,0)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.7-1.494.2.2 ro root=LABEL=/
	initrd /initrd-2.6.7-1.494.2.2.img
title Win98 on hda2
	rootnoverify (hd0,1)
	makeactive
	chainloader +1
title WinXP on hde1
	unhide (hd1,0)
	unhide (hd1,4)
	map (hd0) (hd1)
	map (hd1) (hd0)
	rootnoverify (hd1,0)
	chainloader +1





More information about the fedora-list mailing list