On Thu, 26 May 2005, R M wrote:
--- Ninad Bapat freeninad@gmail.com wrote:
Hi I have 2 computers.
<snip>
Now I would like to re install thes distros the following way 1.FC3 2.Debian Sarge 3.Slackware 4.Ubuntu Hoary Each will be allocated 4gb space Will also alocate 512mb as swap space The remaining space will remain empty or may be used in future for LFS or Gentoo. Is the above scheme possible ? by creating extended partitions
Yes u can hv many distro installed on single PC.
yes you can :)
You can keep /home swap comman for all.
I suggest you keep only swap common. A common /home may give you problems.
FC3 starts UIDs from 1000 but debian and debian based distros start UIDs from 500 onwards. I have debian on my laptop and FC3 at work. Whenever I ferry any files to and from the two machines I always have a problem of the UIDs being different. I have to su and then work on the external USB key. There is a workaround but I haven't got around to doing to doing it. Something to do with fiddling with the GIDs. Look in the archives of LIH.
You need to take care of boot loader. You will have to add boot settings for each distro in boot loader config file.
correct.
When you install first distro, install the boot loader in mbr. After this, there is no need to install boot loader again when u install another distro. Instead add boot settings for new distro in the already installed boot loader's config file.
Can't be done, the OP says he has to have XP on this machine. So that will hog the mbr. What I suggest is install the bootloader on the first part of the respective root partitions.
What I suggest is create atleast hda2, hda3 (primary partitions) make the rest of them extended partitions. Now install all the distros on the fresh partitions. Install the bootloader on the first part of the respective partitions. Most distros will recognise the XP and the other distros. Let the bootloader add these entries aoutomatically.
One cheat is to install the distro on hda2 last. Now before you reboot, run fdisk from a terminal window and make hda2 the active partition.
On reboot, you will be able to boot into XP or any of the linux distors you want.
If you want to keep things simple for the family, configure the bootloader of hda2 to boot XP by default. You can manually choose your distro at the boot prompt.
I have a similar setup as follows
hda1 XP hda2 FC2 / hda3 debian / hda5 swap (common) hda6 FC2 /home hda7 debian /home
hda2 is the active partition.
Will 4 gb suffice for each distro. I intend to install the full distros and then remove unwanted packages.
This should give you a pointer: ------------------------------------ root@bryonia:/home/spavri# df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/hda3 3.2G 1.4G 1.7G 45% / tmpfs 62M 4.0K 62M 1% /dev/shm /dev/hda7 5.1G 1.9G 3.0G 40% /home /dev/hda2 3.2G 2.8G 240M 93% /mnt/usbhdd
-----------------------------------
hda2 is a fully fuctional FC2 install with full KDE but no GNOME.
hda3 is a sort of hybrid debian/lfs with KDE and no GNOME and also includes ~400 mb of binaries in/var/cache/apt/archives.
Thanks and Regards Ninad
hth, ask for any more help.
regards,
Sharukh.