[ubuntu-za] Installing 3 distro's on same drive.

Daniël Louw daniel at dline.co.za
Tue Apr 19 15:16:52 UTC 2011


On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 4:55 PM, Johan Scheepers <johansche at telkomsa.net>wrote:

> Good day,
>
> If I intend to install 3 distro's on one drive, but would like to find out
> if it is possible / feasible ?
>
> Make 4 partitions on drive.
>
> Should they be all primary. I understand linux can handle that?
>
> For instance..
>
> First partition..        Ubuntu
> second partition..    Fedora
> third partition..        Centos
> fourth partition..      Swap.
>
> Now..should I install them in that sequence then Centos would control the
> MBR ?
>
> So now what happens when ..  say I replace  any of the first 2 with
> another/later distro ?
>
> What can be done should the MBR go bad to boot the distro'S.
>
> Some advice will be appreciated
> Thanks
> Johan S
>
> --
> ubuntu-za mailing list
> ubuntu-za at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-za
>

Hello Johan

Currently I have 4 OS's (Ubuntu, Win7 X86, Win7 X64 and Ubuntustudio), a
swap partition, a 10MB partition for the manager (see below) and a shared
data partition all on one drive, all of them primary partitions.

I use BootIT NG (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootit-next-generation.htm)
to manage everything. I see on their website NG got replaced by something
else (BootIT Bare Metal (BM)). I do not know BM, it's new. I only know NG,
but I presume they work the same.

NG installs on a small partition on your drive, and adds a reference to this
partition in the MBR of your drive. So NG loads right after boot, and then
you select the OS you want to load from there.
The amount of options that you can set is really amazing. It hides any
partition/drive you want from any other partition/drive. So this means you
install each OS separately, and all of them are blissfully unaware of all
the other OS's installed. So no messing with GRUB or anything.

You can copy, backup, clone, create, modify, resize, move and delete a
partition, even when there is an OS installed on it. Forget about gParted,
this thing really rocks! You can make as many partitions on the drive you
want, and you can make all of them primary.

Unfortunately it is not free. But I am yet to find something that provides
this amount of power.
I suggest you read the manual (
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/downloads/bootitbm_en_manual.pdf), and
start from scratch, on a fresh drive, just to make sure you don't destroy
anything you don't want destroyed! :-p
Please ask me if you have any other questions.

-- 
Regards

*Daniël Louw*
================================
daniel at dline.co.za
www.dline.co.za
+27 84 2499 299
+12 12 347 8305
================================
*"Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft
building progress by weight." - *Bill Gates
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