Fedora vs. Ubuntu (hijacked: can I dual boot FC and Kubuntu?)

[Joel Rees]

On 2006/09/23, at 12:05, anthony baldwin wrote:

> Claude Jones wrote:
>
>> On Friday September 22 2006 8:52 am, Joel Rees wrote:
>>
>>> I don't like the idea, because I am aware that many ATA  
>>> controllers  can't seem to keep master and slave out of each  
>>> other's hair.
>>>
>>
>> I have to ask - several times in this post you allude to master/ 
>> slave issues. What are you talking about? I have been building my  
>> own machines since 1989, and I've managed hundreds in my work.  
>> Nearly all the machines I've worked on had dual drives with master/ 
>> slave configurations - I use computers in pretty stressful  
>> environments such as video and audio editing workstations a lot.  
>> Yet, in all that time, with all those machines, I've never  
>> encountered problems with drive conflicts, except ones I've caused  
>> myself due to improper jumpering. For the second time in a month  
>> on this list, someone has alluded to such problems but with no  
>> details. What sorts of problems have you had? I would like to know  
>> in case I encounter such in the future.
>>
> The thing is, I have never before worked with more than one drive  
> on my machine.
> I am, thus, completely ignorant of how to manage such a configuration.

If you want a tutorial, there are tutorials in various places on the  
web. Google is your friend, and, much though I'd love to tell you all  
the fun stuff I've learned getting (for instance) a six-way boot with  
two Linuxen and four BSDs on two drives running, etc., etc. but the  
best advice I have is just try it. Except for one thing, I wouldn't  
try getting a shared /home going until I had a bit of experience  
under my belt.

> I´ve also only ever dual-booted on a system that hd windows  
> installed first.
> What I would like to do now is add a drive with Kubuntu, in  
> addition to my FC5 install.
> I have already installed my 200gb drive and done a fresh FC5  
> install.  Now, what I want to know is,
> can I add my 15gb drive as a slave, install Kubuntu on it and have  
> grub recognize and offer both to boot,

This much is, like I said, pretty straightforward.

> and access data from both drive, regardless of which OS I choose to  
> boot.

You need to understand the file system format -- extfs2 (or is it 3  
these days?) man fstab and mount and what those refer you to for  
starters.

> I would even like the Kubuntu install to recognise the /home on the  
> FC5 install on the master/200fb drive
> as /home.
> I´ve never done this stuff before.

Never a better time to start. And, like I mentioned before, because  
of what I have read on the web, I'd prefer to put the two drives on  
separate channels or even separate controllers. If you are in the US  
or Japan, controller cards are cheap. On the other hand, if it's your  
home box and you can deal with the possibility that data in your / 
home partition might get silently corrupted (as in mostly ripped  
music or stuff that doesn't cost you money when it goes south), go  
for it.