Triple Booting

[CrackedButter]

Okay i'm testing your brains over this one.

I'm trying to boot my laptop with 3 operating systems, they are: WindowsME, SuSE 8.1 and RedHat 8.0(i install in that order as well).

The problem i have is with the 2 linux distros, windows is okay about living with them!

Anyway here was my setup before i wiped the disk, i will start again soon.

\/ MountPoint|Type|Format|Size(MB)|Start|End

/dev/hda1| vfat| 9782| 1| 1247 <<windows
/dev/hda2| swap| yes| 737| 1248| 1341| << shared swap
/dev/hda3| reiserfs| 4299| 1342| 1889| <<SuSE
/dev/hda4| EXTENDED| 4259| 1890| 2432|
/dev/hda5| /boot| ext3| yes| 102| 1890| 1902 <<RH boot
/dev/hda6| /| ext3| yes| 4142| 1903| 2430 <<RH

Their are 2 problems that i had.
1. SuSE didn't (as you can see) doesn't have a boot partition, Suse is hda3 and shares its swap with redhat which is hda6 and rh's boot is hda5.
2. When fully installed redhat doesn't see suse or windows anyway so i couldn't mount those partitions.

I'm thinking i should install in this order: windows, RedHat and then SuSE.

Anybody care to help? After i installed redhat last, RH wouldn't add Suse to the boot list.

Now i was told to like copy the suse kernel into the RH boot partition but i wouldn't how to do that and its harder when RH cannot see suse anyway.

If this seems all like crazy stuff then please refer to this forum thread:

http://forum.****microsoft.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=5&t=001309

When giving your suggestions please note that i am not all to well clued up on the solutions so maybe speak a little english!

 

[Phantasm66]

you don't need a seperate boot partition for linux any more. You can just pass the lba32 parameter into lilo if needed. /boot does not have to be below any kind of cylinder limit.

I would keep things simple and have a FAT32 primary partition, then extended, then logical for red hat, logical for suse and logical for swap. there is no reason why this should not work if done correctly.

 

[CrackedButter]

Can you be a little more detailed about this?
I am still a little wet behind the ears with this whole thing.

Would you know which order i should install linux?

 

[Phantasm66]

hang on...

this is the weekend.. its a miracle i am posting at all...

i will write a detailed guide on how I would do it....

back up all important data and wait for a completely new partitioning scheme.....

 

[Phantasm66]

read [https://www.techspot.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=214] this[/url]

 

[CrackedButter]

i will read thankyou.

 

[Phantasm66]

any more help please post back i will help you..... >))

my 2nd machine boots 14 different OS..... just ask for help i will give it to you.....

 

[CrackedButter]

Just a thought, what is the difference between GRUB or LILO? Also which linux distro shopuld i install last? I already left RH last so i'm thinking SuSE this time should go last, or does it make no difference.

 

[Phantasm66]

LILO is easier to administer

in general, linux nerds like me can tell you more about lilo than they can grub....

 

[CrackedButter]

So if SuSE uses GRUB then would it be better for me and you if i install RH last and use LILO with it?

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Personally, I find GRUB easier to configure. All I need to do is edit grub.conf, I don't have to run grub itself, for example (no big deal anyway ). GRUB also has a "shell", sort of, where you can enter partitions and kernel options directly, boot menus with colors, detection of many file systems (which means you can read configuration files from partitions during booting) etc.. It can also chain-load other bootloaders.

 

[CrackedButter]

I tried that myself with GRUB but it wouldn't find SuSE. I selected / partition the first time and it wouldn't boot, then the second time i tried it with the /root partition and it still wouldn't boot.

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

From GNU GRUB FAQ:

I have a separate boot partition on GNU/Linux (or another UNIX-like system), and GRUB seems not to handle this situation correctly.

This is often reported as a bug, but this is not a bug really. This is a feature.

Because GRUB is a boot loader and it normally runs under no operating system, it doesn't know where a partition is mounted under your operating systems. So, if you have the partition /boot and you install GRUB images into the directory /boot/grub, GRUB recognizes that the images lies under the directory /grub but not /boot/grub. That's fine, since there is no guarantee that all of your operating systems mount the same partition as /boot.

There are several solutions for this situation:

Install GRUB into the directory /boot/boot/grub instead of /boot/grub. This may sound ugly but should work fine.

Create a symbolic link before installing GRUB, like cd /boot && ln -s . boot. This works only if the filesystem of the boot partition supports symbolic links and GRUB supports the feature as well.

Install GRUB with the command install, to specify the paths of GRUB images explicitly. Here is an example:
grub> root (hd0,1)
grub> install /grub/stage1 d (hd0) /grub/stage2 p /grub/menu.lst

GRUB should understand Reiserfs just fine - assuming you haven't compiled it without Reiserfs support.

However, I'm not saying you must not use LILO

 

[Justin]

GRUB and LILO are for n00bs


Give me SBM or give me death!