[LBo] How to make a bunch of flavours of unix

[Anita Lewis]

On 12/05/2006 05:16 AM Ali Metin wrote:
>     I have an 300GB hd. Plenty of room as you may say. I want to have experience    with lots of (say 5) distros. For this purpose what do you think about    if it will be    a good way to install them on the same hard disk same machine?    Or if you have another idea, could please phrase it? I dont know much    how I install only one grub and manage all those installs.
>   

One easy way to deal with the booting is to use chainloader.  Install
your first distro and have that be the one that holds the main grub.  In
the /boot/grub/menu.lst for that distro you will put the information for
booting all the distros that you install. After the first distro
installs it will have a paragraph or two for it like:
----------
title           Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.17-10-386
root            (hd0,3)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-10-386 root=/dev/hda4 ro
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.17-10-386
quiet
savedefault
boot
----------

When you install any distro after that, be sure to install grub or lilo
in the root partition of that distro and not in the MBR.  Most will ask
you which you want to install it in.  Some may not ask and they will
install in the MBR automatically. That is a problem, but it can be fixed.

After you install the second distro, boot back into your first distro. 
Add another paragraph to /boot/grub/menu.lst:
----------
title           Ubuntu 6.06 (hda10)
root            (hd0,9)
chainloader     +1

---------

Note that the second distro is on /dev/hda10, but the grub way of
writing that is (hd0,9)--numbering 1 less.  The chainloader makes the
grub or lilo on /dev/hda10 (where you installed it in the root
partition) to now take over if you choose this second distro. 

This is not the only way to handle multi-boot, but it is pretty easy to
keep track of things this way.  Just remember which distro is the one
where you have the menu.lst for the grub that is in the MBR.

Anita