Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (3901 mails)

[Doug B <suse@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sunday 02 January 2005 11:10 am, James Hatridge wrote:
> Hi all...
>
> I've set up a couple of dual boot W$/SuSE systems before. But I plan
> on next weekend trying a SuSE/Mandrake system. I've never did a
> Linux/Linux system before. Is there anything special I should watch
> out for? Does it matter which one I install first?
>

I usually have several distros installed at one time.  The main problem 
I have run into, is when a distro uses the partition label instead of 
of the /dev/xxx to mount partitions.  If two installs each create a 
partition labeled '/', then the system doesn't know which one to use 
and, IIRC, will use the first one it finds, which can screw things up. 
After the install, I always check fstab and grub menu.lst(or menu.conf 
depending on distro and version) to make sure everything is pointing 
to/mounting /dev/xxx and not labels.

I don't use a separate /boot for each distro.  '/boot' is part of '/'.

I don't install the boot loader with each distro.  I have a favorite 
distro that I use almost all the time.  That is the distro I install 
grub from and that is the menu.lst/menu.conf I modify to boot the other 
distros.

Doug