booting multiple OS

[Derek Broughton]

ruscook wrote:

> I've a question re: "best practice" for booting multple OS off a single
> HDD.
> 
Best practice?  Only install Ubuntu :-)
> 
> The first problem I have so far is each OS I install overwrites the grub
> config of the previous one, rather than adding to it.
> 
> Should I use ONE /boot (dev/sda1 in this case) and share it with all OS
> or should I just leave /boot as part of the / of each OS (i.e. have a
> separate /boot for each OS)? If I use a separate boot partitions for
> each OS, how do I do multi-boot?

I've done it both ways, and both have their advantages (these days I don't
multiboot at all), but if you have just one /boot partition, at the very
least Ubuntu is able to leave the other OS's grub stanzas alone.  I
wouldn't count on all of them to be so careful, but Ubuntu will auto-update
the parts between the "DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS" tags, and not anything
else, so you keep the other OS's stanzas outside that part.  If they have
some similar magic, you may be able to have a section for each OS.
> 
> The second issue, I've made a primary partition for BSD (as it doesn't
> seem to work with logical partitions), but I'm not sure how to install
> the BSD boot loader. Should it go at the beginning of the partition I
> install BSD to and try and make sure I leave the MBR for GRUB?

Sorry, can't help with BSD.
-- 
derek