Question about dual-booting two versions of RedHat
Jim Cornette
redhat-jc at insight.rr.com
Thu Oct 16 03:21:57 UTC 2003
Terry R Linhardt wrote:
> I have a large disk drive with ample space. I've decided I would like to
> install two versions of RedHat. One would be a "production" version, the
> other a "test" version.
>
> The documentation I've seen talks about Linux co-existing in a dual boot
> with some version of Windows.
>
> I've installed the "first" version of Linux in the first 25 GB of disk
> space. Do I install the "2nd" version in a similar manner?...that is,
> using a custom install and then selecting the unused portion of the
> drive to install the 2nd version? GRUB will see the two installs and
> allow me to select which one to boot?
>
> In a sense, this all seems fairly easy...is it pretty straight-forward?
>
> By-the-way, initial impressions of the latest Beta are quite favorable.
> That is, the overall interface is quite nice!
>
> Thanks...Terry
I have two different versions of RHL/Fedora on two seperate drives. As
indicated, I have two boot drives. Each boot drive was automaticall
labeled by the new installation to be /boot1 (instead of /boot), /1
(instead of /) - I selected the mounting points for my existing
installation and the installer did the rest of the work with labeling
drives, etc.
The main advantage of running two seperate boot partitions is that grub
will be available for both installations, seperately, no interactions.
You will have grub installed on both boot drives. The grub.conf files
will be unique. I open up gedit and edit each with the latest
information manually. (Cut from one, add to the other, as changes take
effect.) This method works also for different distros to co-exist.
Here is my /etc/fstab for one of my systems. Notice the labels and
partition mounting schemes. Below that is a sample of my grub file for
the active boot loader.
Originally grub was active on /dev/hdb windows was on HDA. When I wiped
windows off my drive and installed another version of linux (RHL 7.3),
hda became the active grub boot partition.
Then when I did a fresh install on the hdb drive, the active grub
switched back to hdb. An upgrade leaves the active grub partition untouched.
Anyway, this is my scheme for dual booting. I never tried with one
shared boot partition. I don't know if there is collisions between the
two installs or not.
Jim
[jim at local jim]$ cat /etc/fstab
LABEL=/1 / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot1 /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
LABEL=/ /rh9 ext3 defaults 1 2
LABEL=/boot /rh9boot ext3 defaults 1 2
LABEL=/home /rh9home ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hdb4 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0
/dev/sda1 /mnt/flash auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0
/dev/cdrom1 /mnt/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/rh9boot/grub/grub.conf
# 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 (hd1,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hdb2
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=1
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd1,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Fedora Core (2.4.22-1.2088.nptl)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2088.nptl ro root=LABEL=/ hdd=ide-scsi
initrd /initrd-2.4.22-1.2088.nptl.img
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Fedora HDA (2.4.22-1.2088.nptl)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2088.nptl ro root=LABEL=/1 hdd=ide-scsi
initrd /initrd-2.4.22-1.2088.nptl.img
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