VDQ : Triple Boot Advice? (Beartooth Testbedder)

[Graham Martin]

> Let me set up a Very Dumb Question (VDQ). My apologies in advance for
> repeating much of this to those who have been of such vast help getting me
> this far. (Followup to: is set as gmane.linux.redhat.fedora.general)
> 
> I have a testbed machine which currently has /dev/hda1 - 6, according to
> qtparted, with sizes 102 MB, 14 GB, 13 GB, 13 GB, 12 GB, and 14 MB
> respectively (rounded to nearest whole MB or GB). It actually boots only
> Ubuntu, which is on hda5. hda1 is /boot, and hda6 is swap.
> 
> I had CentOS alone on the whole hard drive, and found that Ubuntu 6.06
> couldn't keep it, by any means I could find, using the GUI installer.
> (Dunno if that's anaconda or something else.)
> 
> Getting Ubuntu 6.06-alternate instead, I tried to stumble and stagger
> through text-install and manual partitioning, both for the first time --
> and, not surprisingly, eventually did get Ubuntu installed, only at
> the price of hosing CentOS.
> 
> (If I were doing it all over, perhaps I should do the partitioning first
> and separately, with knoppix or gparted, or with qtparted if that has a
> live cd. Maybe I should Dban the whole shebang, and repartition first
> anyway ...)
> 
> After much help, I concluded that that release of Ubuntu had also been a
> mistake : getting my must-have apps onto it cost lots of grief, and the
> most essential, Alpine 1.0, never made it at all. That means I can't yet
> give Ubuntu a fair test as to filling my needs.
> 
> So now I want to install CentOS 5.1 again, Ubuntu 7.10, and Fedora 8.
> 
> The VDQ comes in three parts.
> 
> First, the sequence : I'd prefer to put the new Ubuntu  onto one of the 13
> GB partitions, and make it end up second in boot sequence. 
> 
> I *think* I'll be safer to install it first in time, and with the GUI
> .iso, *not* with the text-install, which I lack the savvy to use. 
> 
> Can I do that? Or does installing it first in time force me to use the
> first free partition? (If it does, but lets me keep the rest of the setup,
> I'd rather live with it than tackle the text-install again, let alone
> re-partition.)
> 
> Second, also about the sequence : given that all I've ever really run has
> been RedHat or Fedora (but I've been doing that since RH7), will I be any
> better off installing one of them before the other?
> 
> Third, does anyone know of an example somewhere of a grub.conf, for a
> machine running three linuces, which I can manage to clone once I do get
> all three installed?
> 
> I'm assuming that each OS will have a way of booting itself once I get to
> it, and that the first and hardest job will be instructing grub how to get
> to each, in a way that enables it to update for itself whenever any of
> the three gets a fresh kernel on some update. Is that right?
> 
> My experience in the past has been that grub is everywhere dense, as the
> mathematicians say. Not in this life will I get my head far enough
> around it to have a real grasp of how to configure it -- not and get it
> right. Man grub and its ilk wear out my fingernails as I try to climb the
> walls.
> 
> But I can copy and vary, or follow a recipe if it's explicit enough.
> 
> -- 
> Beartooth Staffwright, Neo-Redneck, Double Retiree,
> Not Quite Clueless Linux Power User : F8, C5.1, U6.06;
> I have precious (very precious) little idea where up is.
> 
> 
HI, I find it easier to install grub on each partition and have a boot
menu. The one I use is called GAG Graphical boot manager. It can be
saved to a floppy disk for backup which is handy if something goes
wrong.
Just install grub to whatever partition you have installed your system
to. example ( sudo grub-install /dev/hda5 ) or hda7, hda8 

You might want to check GAG out here.
http://gag.sourceforge.net/download.html

My partition setup is as follows.

01 /dev/hda1  ext2   Puppy linux
02  /dev/hda2   extended
03  /dev/hda5   Linux Ubuntu-6.06     
04  /dev/hda6   Linux swap
05  /dev/hda7   Linux Ubuntu-7.10
06  /dev/hda8   Linux PCLinuxOS-2007

Someone might have a better way of doing it but I find this was easier
for me. I hope this is of some help for you.
Regards Graham.