Triple boot FC3 intallation question

Robert Storey y2kbug at ms25.hinet.net
Thu Jan 27 08:45:55 UTC 2005


On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 10:54:20 +0000
Bob Brennan <rbrennan96 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have a Pentium III PC with Windows ME and Win2k Pro currently
> dual-booting. For reasons not important to this question I want to
> keep both current OS's and add FC3.
> 
> I am well practised in setting up the proper partitions for such an
> installation but am wondering in advance if anyone knows if all 3 OS's
> will now be available in the FC3 boot loader, which I usually choose
> as the default Grub loader.
> 
> Thanks in advance for advice / warnings.
> bob

A suggestion I'd like to make to anybody who values "user friendliness"
is, rather than use Grub, consider using GAG. Not many Linux people seem
to know about GAG - it's more popular with the BSD folks. GAG is
graphical, user-friendly, and hardly needs any explanation to figure out
how to use it. It can be downloaded from gag.sourceforge.net (download
the ISO version and burn it to a cdrom, which will then be bootable).
Read the README and follow the menus.

There is a catch. I said that GAG is more popular with BSD users than
Linux users, and there is a reason for that, though it's no big deal.
BSD (and Windows) will boot if your boot manager just points to the
kernel, but Linux requires a "boot loader". GRUB and LILO both perform
double duty as boot manager and boot loader, but GAG is only a boot
manager. So you still need GRUB (or LILO) to make Linux boot with GAG.
It's no big deal, but here is the little trick - when you install Fedora
and you get to the question about GRUB, be sure you choose the
"advanced" boot option and then tell the installer to put GRUB into the
boot partition, NOT into the MBR. That's all you've got to do. GAG will
then be able to boot Fedora.

You can run GAG from the cdrom, or install it permanently in the MBR
(recommended). It will find all the operating systems on your hard drive
and set them up for multi-boot. Right now, I've got it booting 4 OSs,
without issues.

regards,
Robert




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