2009/4/28 Viktor Mastoridis <viktor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:> small history,>> I am using Ubuntu Studio for a year now, and with the release of 9.04> Jaunty, I decided to do a clean install of it.> As for a long time a wanted to try Studio64, I decided to partition my hard> disk and install that as well (Studio64 2.1)> I also like and need Frescobaldy, but I just couldn't install it on a Debian> platform, so I decided to make one more partition and install Open Suse> 11.1.> Finally, I made one more partition for future OS tests and one partition for> the files.> All in all, on my 500gb hard disk I created 6 partitions and installed the> OS's in the following order:> 50gb partition 1 : Ubuntu Studio> 50gb partition 2: Open Suse> 50gb partition 3: Studio64> 50gb partition 4: empty> 180gb partition 5: files> 20gb partition 6: swap>> Now, of course, every OS created it's own boot loader and when I finally> installed Studio64, although it recognised the other OS's, and gave me the> option to boot into them, a Grub error 12 would appear (no files).>> Browsing Forums, I bumped across Grub Super Disk and I am able to boot into> every single OS from there. But alas, I am not literate enough to create a> valid menu.lst on the master boot record.>> I would appreciate any hints or (links to) simple and clear instructions on> the net. I am ready to reinstall all the OS's if needed. I start to> understand that a small separate /boot partition would be very useful, but I> don't have a clue how to set it up.>> Viktor> Simplistically speaking it's a non-issue to have multiple Linux OS'son the same system, either on the same drive or even on separatedrives. Each is accessed through an entry in grub.conf. In myexperience you have to watch out for the following sort of issues: 1) Keep each system completely independent on different partitions.Simplistically, if everything under / for each system resides in itsown / partition, which it sounds like you've done, or if you arecareful to create separate partitions for each distros /var directoryfor instance, then you can have multiple partitions for each distro.It's just important that each distro point only at partitions that itis using. It sounds like you've done that so reinstalls should not berequired - only possibly edits in each distro's fstab files. 2) To protect each distro in each distro's fstab file make sure youonly mount the partitions appropriate for that distro. Don't mountDebian's /var partition when running Suse, etc. 3) To share your user data between distros it's fine to have a single/home partition that is used by all distros, but it has to be donecarefully and it likely will not be correct immediately after theinstall. Different distros will give different users unique user andgroup IDs so you need to make sure they are all made identical whenusing useradd and other tools like that. None the less when they arecorrectly set I've not had any trouble with Fedora reading my Gentoo/home/mark directory, etc. I can log on as mark in any installationand they all see the same files. 4) You can use grub from any modern distro to boot all distro's thatyou've installed. 5) In grub.conf you'll have different kernel command lines based onwhat disk you are booting off of pointing at the right partition.Other than that grub will look very normal. Hope this helps,Mark_______________________________________________Linux-audio-user mailing listLinux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-audio-user
