Many problems with F11

[Bill Davidsen]

Tom Horsley wrote:
> On Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:33:44 +0000
> Croombe F. Pensom wrote:
> 
>> Finally, to save me future bother and suchlike, is it possible to
>> install several distros on the one HD and be able to select them at
>> start-up?
> 
> Yep. I do it that way, always installing new distro from scratch it
> a separate partition and not switching to that as the default
> till I have it working well.
> 
> My primary master boot system is a stand alone grub leftover from
> installing fedora a long time ago with a separate /boot partition.
> I just kept the /boot partition and use it for chainloading the
> other systems with entries in grub.conf like so:
> 
> title Fedora 11 x86_64
> 	rootnoverify (hd0,1)
> 	chainloader +1
> 
> When I installed fedora 11, I told it to install grub in the
> boot partition, NOT in the master boot record of the physical
> disk. That leaves my master boot alone and lets the chainloader
> startup the grub in the fedora 11 boot partition.
> 
That's actually better than my practice of just installing and booting the new 
release, then mounting the old /boot on /mnt/tmp and copying the boot stanza out 
of grub.conf and onto the end of the new version (allowing booting from the new 
grub menu). It does need a "master boot" partition, though, so you either have 
to think ahead or have a happy accident.

> I currently have both 32 and 64 bit versions of fedora 8, 10, and 11
> all on one disk, all chainloading from the master grub
> (though I admit the only one I'm using these days is 64 bit
> fedora 11).
> 
I went back to 32 bit for the moment, I saw no advantage over PAE, and I got 
tired of building things or installing 32 bit libraries. I have a 64 bit install 
on a test machine, but I run 32 at the moment.

You can install on partitions, my way or Tom's way (which is probably better), 
boot lots of kernel versions, have Windows, install stuff on USB thumb drives, 
etc. Oh, and install stuff in virtual machines to test without risking your 
whole drive.

You are not restricted, other than by disk space.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot