Joe(theWordy)Philbrook schreef:
About pitfalls, I'd recommend being real careful about sharing /home between different distributions. As different distros, and sometimes different releases of the same distro, often feature different releases of various applications. Many of which needs to find it's rc files in $HOME. This matters when an upgraded application from one uses an rc file that is no longer compatible with the older version of the application still in the other distro's installation.
Thanks! So I should make sure that the apps are all the same version in all distros, or another solution is to make a separate data partition.
As to the /boot I'd have to suggest choosing one distro to manage the bootloader. You should be able to manually copy the vmlinuz and initrd files from the other distro's /boot to the one you let install to the mbr. Then manually add appropriate boot instructions to it's menu.lst, grub.conf, or lilo.conf so that it can boot the other distros.
OK, good idea. I think I'll use a special "bootloader" distribution. Felix Miata mentioned DFSee & Knoppix. I know Knoppix as a livecd/rescue cd distro. I don't know DFSee but I'll check it out.
I don't know squat about LVM or raid. I simply use fdisk or cfdisk to partition my hard drives. I created a /boot partition that none of the distro's automatically update by copying one of the /boot directories to a separate partition (hd0,1) aka /dev/sda2 editing the root lines in it's grub.conf to point at (hd0,1), and then temporarily mounting it on /boot long enough to reinstall grub to the mbr... After that any time I install a linux I always poke around the advanced bootloader settings in the installer menu until I find a way to either install the bootstrap to floppy /dev/fd0 or to the distro's / partition. That way when a distribution update changes the kernel, it will update the files in it's /boot making it easy to copy the necessary changes to the files in my boot partition. Another advantage of a distro installing it's boot loader to it's / partition is that then I can add a choice to my boot's grub that chainloads the bootloader in that distro's /partition which will usually continue to work without manual intervention even after the said distro automatically changes it's boot configuration.
Grub doesn't know squat about LVM and raid either, except raid1 (mirroring). That's why I can't put /boot in LVM. I think it won't be possible for me to chainload a bootloader on an LVM partition. I like your idea about having more than one /boot. I also like the idea about fooling the automagic bootstrap thingies with a floppy bootloader. I will try a few things and report back to the list. -- Amedee -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org