RE: Weird looking partition table

[Albert DE WINT <adwint pandora be>]

Op vr 30-05-2003, om 18:30 schreef Mark Knecht:
> >
> > I have both RH 9 kernel 2.40.8 and 2.40-13.9 (the latter does not accept
> > my nVidia driver, so I don't use it. I'd better get rid of it.)
> >
> > I suppose kernels (have to) reside in distinct partitions?
> 
> No. All of my RH kernels are in a single /boot partition. My Mandrake and
> Gentoo kernels are in their own partitions. These '/boot' partitions are all
> about 50MB if I remember correctly.

The fully-automated installers do it all "behind your back".
Then the final result comes as a surprise for the newbie.

> 
> Each distribution's root (/) exists in its own partition. These partitions
> are about 5-6GB each. This holds the majority of what gets installed.
> 
> I let each distribution create my /home/mark user directories. I have
> another partition that holds my user data. In each distribution I create a
> directory /home/mark/data, and then I mount my data partition there
> automatically in fstab. This way, no matter which distribution I'm in I have
> access to all my files. (No different than mounting a Windows FAT drive
> under /mnt/windows for all three distributions.

I understand the point.  But when it comes to typing the actual
commands, I'm just hopeless.

> > >    Grub can easily handle multiple distributions. hda3 will have a
> > > /boot/grub/grub.conf file. You can edit that file to add
> > another option to
> > > point at the Mandrake installation on /hda6. Just note the way that grub
> > > works would describe hda6 as (0,5).
> >
> > Aha! So that will be the 'come-back' of Mandrake 9.0.
> > (I thought about replacing that by Mandrake 9.1.one of these days)
> 
> Should be. It works for me.
> 
I added in GRUB:

	title Mandrake 9.0
		rootnoverify (hd0.5)
		chainloader +1

booting it says:

	Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format
	press any key to continue

Then I tried something like the RED HAT title, (just a wild guess),
obviously that did not run neither. :-)

title Mandrake 9.0
        root (hd0,5)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.19-16 ro root=LABEL=/ hdd=ide-scsi
        initrd /initrd-2.4.19-16.img

> >
> > >    Also, there is no reason that you must have two swap
> > partitions. You can
> > > point RH and Mandrake both at /hda4, which will be a faster
> > partition anyway
> > > based on it's position on the drive.
> > "Then I have Mandrake 9 sitting somewhere, I guess that's hda6?
> > Right! I admit I had a paranoid feeling about those two "swappers".
> > Mandrake's SWAP was installed first. RedHat's installer didn't notice it
> > and joined it's own SWAP, whithout asking any questions.
> >
> > My guess was this happened because Mandrake's EXT 2 would not be
> > compatible with RED HAT's EXT 3. That's why I did not dare to remove
> > one.  Suppose I did remove one, I then have to point either distro to
> > the reamining SWAP to be used, right?  I hate to think about the
> > consequences if it would not find the SWAP.
> 
> Linux will run fine without ANY swap as long as you have at least 256MB of
> DRAM. Run 'top' and look at your memory usage immediately after a cold boot.
> If no swap is used, then you would be fine booting with swap turned off. (I
> do not recommend this. I'm just making a point.)

I have 512 MB of DRAM on board. If I can afford to get rid of both those
SWAP partitions, the better.

> 
> Look at the swapoff and swapon commands for more info. You can even mount
> BOTH swap partitions under BOTH distributions if you wanted to, but I think
> you should reclaim the drive space and put it to better us.

I will read it.

> - Mark
> 
> 
> 
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