Booting Multiple OS
Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: Booting Multiple OS
started by: sankarv
Posted by sankarv on Mar. 09 2006,03:53
I installed Damn small linux and its working fine. After a month i installed SUSE linux 9.1 and the boot loader failed to recognize damnsmalllinux.so once again i installed Damn small linux and It failed to recognise SUSE linux.
But boot loaders of both linux distros can recognise windows 98 whcich is the other OS i have.
Is there a way by which i can have all 3 OSes with no problem in booting.
Posted by mikshaw on Mar. 09 2006,04:06
Which bootloader do you have?If it's Grub, it should be fairly easy to add an entry for another operating system to menu.lst
If your DSL install was frugal, it may not have been detected by suse because it doesn't have the traditional filesystem on the harddrive.
DSL's installation might not be configured to auto-detect other linux systems, but that's just a guess.
Posted by gjhicks on Mar. 09 2006,04:54
Hi,When reading this thread, I thought it a good place to ask about 'grub' and 'frugal' installs. The standard DSL frugal install uses 'lilo' but I already have a multi-os system, using 'grub'.
So, can anyone help me in converting the following 'lilo.conf' into a 'grub' instruction:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
lba32 #enable large disk support
timeout=30 #wait 3 seconds before auto-booting
vga=791
boot=/dev/hda #put boot loader in MBR of target disk
root=/dev/hda7 #set root to be partition of target disk
image=/boot/linux24
label=DSL
initrd=/boot/minirt24.gz
read-only
APPEND="ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init lang=us apm=power-off hda=scsi hdb=scsi hdc=scsi hdd=scsi hde=scsi hdf=scsi hdg=scsi hdh=scsi nomce nodma quiet frugal BOOT_IMAGE=/KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX "
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
I have tried several approached but always get the 'kernel panic' message.
Look forward to your help.
Geoff.
Posted by mikshaw on Mar. 09 2006,06:09
Some things in the lilo.conf I don't understand, but here's my quick preliminary conversion:timeout 30
title DSL
kernel (hd0,6)/boot/linux24 dsl ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init lang=us apm=power-off hda=scsi hdb=scsi hdc=scsi hdd=scsi hde=scsi hdf=scsi hdg=scsi hdh=scsi nomce nodma quiet frugal vga=791
initrd (hd0,6)/boot/minirt24.gz
Posted by sankarv on Mar. 09 2006,06:12
Hi mikshaw,All the OSes are installed only to harddisk and The bootloaders are LILO for DSL and GRUB for SUSE.
If it is easy to configure the bootloader just tell me how to add an entry.
Thank you
Posted by mikshaw on Mar. 09 2006,06:26
That would depend on which bootloader is actually being used now...which one is in the master boot record (probably which was installed most recently)? I don't know much at all about Lilo...I used it for a little while, but it was in the days when i didn't configure anything i didn't need to configure and everything i did was done through a gui.A grub entry would look pretty much the same as what i posted to gjhicks. The only thing i can think to explain a little more is the partition. a partition listed as (hd0,6) is hda7...first harddrive, seventh partition, starting with zero. I'm not sure if it is different for logical partitions, since i don't use them....i've only gone up to 4
Posted by humpty on Mar. 09 2006,06:40
i may be off topic here, but i've always used ranish partioner, it can easlily install a boot manager on the MBR and you don't have to worry about the fiddly bits;< http://www.ranish.com/part/ >
Posted by gjhicks on Mar. 09 2006,10:47
Hi,Thanks for the tip about the 'grub' equivalent of 'lilo' - it worked just fine! Just in case another newcomer has a go at this, the 'initrd (hd0,6)/boot/minirt24.gz' (or similar) should be on a new line from the 'kernel' line.
Flushed with the success of this question/answer I will chance my arm with another question (quite off topic).
I have tried DSL 2.2b and it has a nice new info panel in the top right corner. Now my little laptop has only 128mb RAM but the info panel notes that /home has aa total of 558mb RAM. Below is a capture of the 'df -h' command:
Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/ram0 2.9M 598.0k 2.3M 20% /
/dev/hda8 1.9G 81.0M 1.7G 4% /cdrom
/dev/cloop 117.4M 117.4M 0 100% /KNOPPIX
/ramdisk 558.0M 732.0k 557.3M 0% /ramdisk
Given only 128mb RAM, where does DSL get the 558mb for the /ramdisk?
Look forward to another success!
Geoff
Posted by roberts on Mar. 09 2006,15:22
Swap
Posted by gjhicks on Mar. 09 2006,23:49
Thanks
Posted by schnopek on Mar. 11 2006,02:54
I have 3 os's on my pc (WinXPHome,Xander os,and Red hat WS) with win xp as fy first os I then went to Xander os. This boot loader let me run both, then I added Red Hat WS. It's boot loader dident detect my other two operating systems. So I recoverd the Xander os's boot loader and it atomaticly detected all 3 operating systems. This might help but I dont know much about the boot loaders for linux. I just recover Xander os's boot loader every time and it finds all of my operating systems.