Question about dual-booting two versions of RedHat

[Jim Cornette]

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