[olug] multiple OS's On 2 disks

[Chad S. Lauritsen]

GRUB does not limit you to stay belo 1024 cyl like lilo does. Grub is
great, i use it myself on everything now because lilo sucks in several
ways. but it took some patience to understand it compared to lilo. maybe
it was just me, but i remember giving up on it the first time i tried to
tackle it. it is well worth it to learn it, though.

at any rate, whether you use grub or lilo, you have to keep your root
directories straight for the distribution/os you want to use. if you
used grub, i don't think you'd have to mount the root dir from the other
distro to get it to work, so that's a plus. also, you can have neat
menus with colors with grub :-)


Nathan Brown wrote:
> 
> Will I be confined to using boot sectors below 1024?
> 
> Nate
> 
>  Brutsche wrote:
> 
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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> >
> > A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far way, someone said...
> >
> > > it just occurred to me that if you're booted into suse, you probably
> > > won't have the redhat root mounted anywhere if your fs, and vice versa.
> > > this would prevent lilo from being able to install both kernels and make
> > > them available for booting.
> > >
> > > you may need to temporarily mount the the other distro's root directory,
> > > then edit lilo.conf appropriately before running lilo
> >
> > Another way to do this would be to take advantage of the fact that PCs
> > have 2 stages (or three, depending on OS and who you ask :)
> >
> > Stage 1: sector 0 of the hard disk; the MBR.  Usually, this stage will
> >    load and run the first sector of the partition that's marked as
> >    "bootable" - stage 2.
> > Stage 2: This boot loader knows where the kernel for whatever OS you run
> >    is located on disk.
> > Stage 3: sometimes the kernel itself; sometimes a command-line utility to
> >    be able to choose which kernel to load (note grub or the FreeBSD boot
> >    loader, for example)
> >
> > The boot load I would use is grub.  It's a really neat little ditty of a
> > boot loader - the stage1 goes in the MBR, and can read the stage2 from
> > almost any device on the system.  grub's stage2 can read the following
> > filesystems *directly*:
> >  * ext2
> >  * fat16/fat32
> >  * reiserfs
> >  * minix
> >
> > It also implements a menu system, and command line, and a method of
> > netbooting PCs with rarp, dhcp, or bootp, and tftp to load the kernel
> > image.
> >
> > I'm assuming the following:
> >  * Windows /dev/hda
> >  * RedHat on /dev/hdb1
> >  * SuSE on /dev/hdb2
> >
> > This is what I would do:
> >
> > 1) install a grub RPM on suse or redhat, it doesn't matter which
> > 2) make a grub menu; put it in Windows as c:\grubmenu.  My menu:
> >
> > timeout 5
> > default 0
> >
> > title   Windows 98
> > root    (hd0,0)
> > makeactive
> > chainloader +1
> >
> > title   RedHat
> > kernel  (hd1,0)/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdb1
> >
> > title   SuSE
> > kernel  (hd1,1)/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdb2
> >
> > 3) copy the stage1 and stage2 files from the grub distribution and put
> >    them under c:\
> > 4) run "grub" and enter these commands; I assume that Windows is on
> >    /dev/hda1:
> >
> >    root (hd0,0)
> >    install /stage1 (hd0) /stage2 /grubmenu
> >
> > Need to upgrade your kernel?  Make it /vmlinuz on the right file system
> > and reboot.  Need to tweak the menu?  Edit grubmenu and reboot.
> >
> > PS: *keep* *an* *emergency* *boot* *floppy* (or cd) *available* for each
> > OS.  It's easy to screw this stuff up!
> >
> > - --
> > - ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Phil Brutsche                                   pbrutsch at creighton.edu
> >
> > GPG fingerprint: BDA4 C23C 1989 31FF CBE8  7EB4 6CA7 9636 941E 8451
> > GPG key id: 941E8451
> > GPG public key: http://www.creighton.edu/~pbrutsch/public-key.asc
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> >
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-- 
Chad Lauritsen                          | 1000 N 2nd Ave
System Administrator                    | Logan, IA 51546
Perfection Learning Corporation         | 712-644-2831 Ext 223

The half wit does not know that gold  Makes apes of many men:
One is rich, one is poor,  There is no blame in that. --The Hávamál

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