[SOLVED] Muitlipe PCLOS Installs

[RobNJ]

Would it be possible to install and dual boot (well, triple... with that other system that I need for itunes) the kde along with one of the remasters, like Phoenix or Black Myst?

Will the boot screen differentiate between the 2 versions of PCLOS?

[T6]

yes it is possible because other users have done it

one of the boot managers should cover all

about having a multiple boot system, any specific reason?

if your idea is to test each desktop environment, you can install many des under one install and test them all, the user/password menu has a button called session, it lists all the des installed and lets you load them

[RobNJ]

yes it is possible because other users have done it

one of the boot managers should cover all

about having a multiple boot system, any specific reason?

if your idea is to test each desktop environment, you can install many des under one install and test them all, the user/password menu has a button called session, it lists all the des installed and lets you load them

Revisiting this.. I'd like to test the environment pre-configured by someone familiar with it. before I start adding, removing stuff!

Also, what would be the right way to configure the boot manager? Botched it, on my last attempt & ended up doing a clean install of PCLOS KDE to fix it.   

[djohnston]

Also, what would be the right way to configure the boot manager?

More info needed. One hard drive, or two or three? What size hard drive? Is Windows installed? Is it the first partition on the hard drive?

For example, if you have Windows installed, its master boot record will be on the beginning of the hard drive. If you add a Linux installation to the same drive, you can include the Windows installation in the GRUB setup and overwrite the Windows MBR. You can then boot Linux or Windows from the GRUB bootloader. But, if you reinstall Windows in the future, the GRUB MBR will be overwritten by Windows, and you won't be able to boot to Linux without fixing GRUB.

What is your hard drive setup? How many and how large? What do you intend to do, both now and in the future? One Windows, one working Linux and one test Linux? Or what?

[RobNJ]

One hard drive. I currently am booting PCLOS KDE & Windows, I have a good sized swap partition & another partirion I'd like to use for testing different flavors of PCLOS. I tried it once , I believe my main problem, was not setting the GRUB properly, to show both PCLOS versions. I'd like to keep it so I can run all three.

[Crow]

What I usually do.

Install Windows
Install PClinuxOS (any, usually KDE) and accept the defaults in Grub
Install other PCLOS flavor but this time choose to install grub to the same partition, system ask if you have another way to boot, you say yes

After that, copy the first Linux stanza from /boot/grub/menu.lst of the last PCLOS installed to /boot/grub/menu.lst of the PCLinuxOS KDE which I installed previously and rename it (LXDE - e17 - whatever)

Reboot

OP taught me that with colors   , if something is hard to understand the post is somewhere just search a little

[Texstar]

What I usually do.

Install Windows
Install PClinuxOS (any, usually KDE) and accept the defaults in Grub
Install other PCLOS flavor but this time choose to install grub to the same partition, system ask if you have another way to boot, you say yes

After that, copy the first Linux stanza from /boot/grub/menu.lst of the last PCLOS installed to /boot/grub/menu.lst of the PCLinuxOS KDE which I installed previously and rename it (LXDE - e17 - whatever)

Reboot

OP taught me that with colors   , if something is hard to understand the post is somewhere just search a little

I did it that way too except I added the other partitions in my primary grub menu.lst as


title KDE
root (hd0,6)
chainloader +1

title MINIME
root (hd0,7)
chainloader +1

title LXDE
root (hd0,8)
chainloader +1

title PHOENIX
root (hd0,09)
chainloader +1

[Crow]

I guess this is a good moment to ask why chainloader is needed?   my grub.lst only uses it for windows 

[Just17]

I guess this is a good moment to ask why chainloader is needed?   my grub.lst only uses it for windows 

Using chainloader points to the boot sector of the partition, which holds the Grub install from that partition's OS.

Doing so gives all the boot options of that install.

[Old-Polack]

I guess this is a good moment to ask why chainloader is needed?   my grub.lst only uses it for windows  

Chainloading is nice because you don't need to keep changing the master grub entry with each new installation. I also use that for partitions on which the OS gets changed frequently. With grub installed to the partition, one only sees the boot choices for that one installation after the chainload. I use entries like;

title Test sda7
root (hd0,6)
chainloader +1

title Test sda8
root (hd0,7)
chainloader +1

title Test sda9
root (hd0,8)
chainloader +1

The title doesn't really matter as I know what I've installed on each partition, so just the partition designation is enough.

When I choose Test sda9, I next get the menu generated by the 64bit test OS installed there, which I'm currently running.

[root@fatman ~]# cat /boot/grub/menu.lst

Code: [Select]

timeout 10
color black/cyan yellow/cyan
gfxmenu (hd0,8)/boot/gfxmenu

title KDE64-2
kernel (hd0,8)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=KDE64-2 root=LABEL=kde64-2  quiet nokmsboot acpi=on resume=LABEL=swap1000 vga=791
initrd (hd0,8)/boot/initrd.img

title KDE64-2-nonfb
kernel (hd0,8)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=KDE64-2-nonfb root=LABEL=kde64-2  quiet nokmsboot acpi=on resume=LABEL=swap1000
initrd (hd0,8)/boot/initrd.img

title failsafe
kernel (hd0,8)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=failsafe root=LABEL=kde64-2  quiet nokmsboot failsafe acpi=on
initrd (hd0,8)/boot/initrd.img


[Crow]

Understood, thank you both 

[Texstar]

Is it possible to chainload to another grub on a different harddrive?

Currently I have this entry.

title SSD
kernel (hd1,4)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux root=UUID=6d0239e7-ff31-4406-86bc-d755bf76682e  quiet nokmsboot vmalloc=256M acpi=on resume=UUID=959da3d8-9a3a-4fae-bb76-42174b417d4c splash=silent vga=788
initrd (hd1,4)/boot/initrd.img
savedefault
boot

[Old-Polack]

Is it possible to chainload to another grub on a different harddrive?

Currently I have this entry.

title SSD
kernel (hd1,4)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux root=UUID=6d0239e7-ff31-4406-86bc-d755bf76682e  quiet nokmsboot vmalloc=256M acpi=on resume=UUID=959da3d8-9a3a-4fae-bb76-42174b417d4c splash=silent vga=788
initrd (hd1,4)/boot/initrd.img
savedefault
boot

Should be no problem. I do it. I've previously chainloaded to as many as 24 installations on 7 hard drives on the same computer. All it needs is to have grub installed on each partition one wishes to chainload to.

[djohnston]

I was looking for a previous post of old-polack's that showed how his partitions and boot menus were laid out. Haven't found it yet. What I did find was a short tutorial on chainloading one GRUB to another.

[Texstar]

Is it possible to chainload to another grub on a different harddrive?

Currently I have this entry.

title SSD
kernel (hd1,4)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux root=UUID=6d0239e7-ff31-4406-86bc-d755bf76682e  quiet nokmsboot vmalloc=256M acpi=on resume=UUID=959da3d8-9a3a-4fae-bb76-42174b417d4c splash=silent vga=788
initrd (hd1,4)/boot/initrd.img
savedefault
boot

Should be no problem. I do it. I've previously chainloaded to as many as 24 installations on 7 hard drives on the same computer. All it needs is to have grub installed on each partition one wishes to chainload to.

I'll try to put grub on the partition instead of the mbr of /dev/sdb.