Multibooting

Paul Howarth paul at city-fan.org
Thu Nov 25 17:36:22 UTC 2004


Satish Balay wrote:
> On Thu, 25 Nov 2004, Paul Howarth wrote:
> 
> 
>>Satish Balay wrote:
>>
>>>An alternative way to install - where no manual intervention is
>>>required is to have a common '/boot' partition for all OSes - this way
>>>there is also a common /boot/grub/grub.conf.
>>>
>>>So, if you update FC3 kernel - the correct grub.conf is updated.
>>>And if you update RHL9 kernel - the correct grub.conf is updated.
>>
>>Wouldn't this cause problems:
>>
>>1. because there would have to be two "template" boot entries, one for each
>>OS, and grubby might have trouble figuring out which one to use?
> 
> 
> Nope - the 'root' parameter will be different for each OS. (and
> different partitions on the disk. Only /boot - a separate patition is
> common)

Supposing the composite grub.conf looks like this:

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# 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 (hd0,0)
#          kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hda5
#          initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.3_FC2)
         root (hd0,0)
         kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.3_FC2 ro root=LABEL=/
         initrd /initrd-2.6.9-1.3_FC2.img
title Fedora Core (2.6.8-1.521)
         root (hd0,0)
         kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.8-1.521 ro root=LABEL=/
         initrd /initrd-2.6.8-1.521.img
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.20-8)
         root (hd0,0)
         kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-8 ro root=LABEL=/1
         initrd /initrd-2.4.20-8.img

So, when a new kernel is to be added, how does grubby know whether to add an 
entry with "root=LABEL=/" or "root=LABEL=/1"?

Paul.




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