multiple frugal distro installs on one partition?

Forum: HD Install
Topic: multiple frugal distro installs on one partition?
started by: stevesr0

Posted by stevesr0 on June 09 2008,02:48

I have been using a number of live CD versions of linux and now want to put several of them on my hard drive as frugal installs.

I vaguely recall that more than one linux distribution can be installed with the frugal technique (in separate folders), but cannot find references here or on other linux fora.

Appreciate any info or referrals to info on how to do this without requiring separate partitions for each distribution.

Thanks

Steve

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on June 09 2008,02:59

see the wiki page on cheat codes, esp. the knoppix_* ones

Posted by jpeters on June 09 2008,03:32

Quote (stevesr0 @ June 09 2008,02:48)

No problem doing this; usually the distro itself will tell you what to add to your menu.list file. If you add it to the same directory that DSL is on, you'll still have access to other directories that contain your files.

Posted by stevesr0 on June 10 2008,15:08

Thanks to both of you, BUT I am a bit concrete and the WIKI data was a little sparse. Perhaps my original question was vague, so let me try to be more specific as to my confusion/ignorance.

Assume I set up a "traditional" set of (say) three linux partitions, one for the distros, one swap and one for data.

Then, can I put different distros which feature "frugal" type installs into individual "folders" (eg, dsl 4.25 in one, 4.3rc2 in another, puppy 4 in a third, wolvix in a fourth, etc) and then modify the grub list so I can choose which to boot?

Further, can I save/restore customizations for the different dsl distros and automatically run the correct one for each distro by editing the "common" grub file?

Appreciate any comments or referral to info for me to chew upon.

Thanks again,

Steve

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on June 10 2008,17:41

My last post was only for DSL frugal installations. I have no idea if those other distributions support the same cheatcodes, but you could check their documentation.

If there are name conflicts and they are different files, you would have to change the name and correspondingly in grub's menu.lst (i.e. different kernels, initrd's, etc.)

I'm not too sure if DSL's default backup/restore options can be used with a subfolder though. You might need to edit some scripts. (Or just have the backup.tar.gz renamed upon shutdown, and placed in .../mydsl/ )

Posted by jpeters on June 10 2008,20:08

You can put Puppy in the same directory as DSL, and just list it in menu.list (they tell you what to write in on their site). As Hats noted, listing different DSL versions is only problematic if the backup file, etc. has the same name and it is in the same directory.

Posted by mikshaw on June 11 2008,11:03

One example:

Code Sample

dsl@bungle:~$ ls /cdrom/{KNOPPIX,boot}/
/cdrom/KNOPPIX/:
KNOPPIX-4.2.3 KNOPPIX-4.3
/cdrom/boot/:
grub linux24-4.2.3 linux24-4.3 minirt24-4.2.3.gz minirt24-4.3.gz

in menu.lst:

Code Sample

kernel /boot/linux24-4.3 root=/dev/hda3 vga=791 knoppix_name=KNOPPIX-4.3 ...
initrd /boot/minirt24-4.3.gz

Quote

I'm not too sure if DSL's default backup/restore options can be used with a subfolder though. You might need to edit some scripts. (Or just have the backup.tar.gz renamed upon shutdown, and placed in .../mydsl/ )

That's pretty clever. You could have powerdown.sh use the knoppix_name parameter (or even a custom param) to juggle all backup archives according to that parameter, saving the need to modify (and potentially maintain) multiple powerdown scripts.

Posted by stevesr0 on June 12 2008,16:35

Thanks for comments, all.

I am impressed by how low my skill level is <g>.

I will obviously need to go step by step and start with frugal of ONE distro before worrying about the multiple distro situation.

steve