On Thu, Feb 07, 2002 at 05:25:00PM -0800, Paul E Condon wrote:
| I want to rearrange my computer so that I can dual boot Patato and Woody.
| I want a separate partition for each, so that I can have a full set of
| appropriate software for each.
Just be sure that any modules (in /lib/modules) for the kernel are the
same for both systems -or- that you use separate kernels for each -or-
that you use no modules at all.
| I need advice on how to set up partitions, and how to configure lilo, etc.
| I've looked at my /etc/lilo.conf, which was created during an installation of
| Potato, and at lilo documentation. It seems to me that the instructions cover
| the case where one has several Linux kernels in the same partition, and the
This is the case you want to look at. Just change the root= and
you'll boot a different partition.
| Do I need to have boot sectors at the beginning of two different partitions?
No, as long as you have a boot loader that loads :-).
| How do I do that if I need that? When I tried to mark two partitions as
| bootable, the software (fdisk?) refused to accept the command.
AFAIK that's a MS-DOS thing and linux won't care.
Checking my home system (debian only, 1 system) there is no "bootable"
partition. My work system (debian and win2k) has only the FAT
partition as "bootable".
| What do I do about the master boot record (MBR)? Do I need to put
| something sepcial there? How?
Nothing more special than any other system :-). (you need a boot
loader, but you knew that already)
Here's a more concrete example. Suppose
/dev/hda1 => /boot
/dev/hda2 => / for system 1
/dev/hda3 => / for system 2
/dev/hda5 => /home
/dev/hda6 => <swap>
I don't use lilo so here's the config for grub, assuming same kernel
is used for both systems and modules are taken care of (either by not
having any or by mirror /lib/modules on the two root partitions) :
title System 1
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-<version> root=/dev/hda2 read-only
boot
title System 2
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-<version> root=/dev/hda3 read-only
boot
(this assumes that you have a symlink in /boot named "boot" that
points to "." (which is called "/boot") -- the reason is explained in
the grub faq and is related to lack of a mount table)
HTH,
-D
--
A violent man entices his neighbor
and leads him down a path that is not good.
Proverbs 16:29
