Hi, all.

I'm planning to install another harddrive in my main machine and install Linux on it. I was planning to be able to install a couple of distros so I can test some different ones. Is it possible to partition the disk with 4 partitions, distro 1 /, distro 2 /, swap and /home, and have both distros use the same /home and swap without screwing up for the other? Need to use different users? What would sensible partition sizes be (300Gb disk, 1Gb RAM)? Thanks.

Stig

At first glance I see no problems with this (provided that one can boot from, say, second partition on the secondary drive - I am totaly rusty in tis area; there is always boot from CD, though). I would choose a conservative file system for shared partition(s) (ext2?). You will have to keep your user and group IDs synced accross the distros.

Yes, what you want is quite possible.

Where it gets tricky, though, is in the bootloader setup. Each distro has it's own unique Linux kernel, and wants to set up the bootloader to load it's own kernel with it's own parameters. And without a lot of fuss, there can be only one bootloader on most systems.. Messy. Very messy.

I routinely work around it, but it takes way too much time to explain in a posting (much quicker to do it than to explain how to do it).

Maybe someone else will show mercy on you!

Cheers

Ok, if it is so much problems getting it to work, I think I'll just install Fedora and skip any other distros.

[Edit] Or would Ubuntu be a better choice (which is the other distro I planned to install)? My firewall is Fedora based. That's why I preferred Fedora... [/edit]

What would sensible partition sizes be for / and /home? Size for swap should be 2Gb (1Gb RAM)?

Stig

Not to mention that windows always wants to grab the master boot record whenever it is installed. There are some 3rd party programs to manage booting between different partitions. Boot Magic is one.

I have no problems dual-booting between Windows and Fedora on my laptop without any 3rd party programs...

Stig

Which did you install first. Bet it was windows.

Couldn't you also just have a shared /boot partition (or equivalent) that contained all the kernels plus the boot loader binaries? I suppose that might require some hacking of the distributions, but it seems like not much.

I'm not gonna bet against you.... Yes, I installed Windows first.

Stig

Yes.. this is no problem. The only two tricky things, as listed by other posters, is making one grub setup that contains the configuation for both.

The only other issue is UID numbers, and which versions of gnome/kde they use.. (sometimes in-compatable config files)

On an advocasy note.. grab Ubuntu, it's excelent.

I installed Fedora Core 4 yesterday. Well, sort of... But there's still problems...

I have an Asus P4C800-E Deluxe motherboard (which according to other posts I found on the Internet, others also had problems with), where I have 2 harddrives on the primary ide-controller and 2 harddrives on the sata-controller. Yesterday I installed a Plextor DVD-burner as secondary master and a new harddrive on the sata raid-controller (set up as ide-controller), where I planned to install Linux.

When I started the installation, it started to print a lot of what looked to me like debug-strings when checking hda and hdb. Same happened on hdc, but suddenly it started to print cdrom looked confused (something like that) in an endless loop... Somewhere in there it had printed Try to boot with acpi=off, so I restarted the installation with acpi=off, but same thing happened. After some searching, I found a posting where one guy had to set the board to Compatible mode instead of Enhanced mode to install Red Hat. Set it to Compatible mode and Secondary P-ATA+S-ATA (needed the DVD...) and this time I got through the installation. The new disk came up as sda and the two other sata-disks came up as sdb and sdc. Grub was installed on MBR on sda. Rebooted and Fedora came up properly. Went back into BIOS and set it to Enhanced mode so I could get the other two drives (where one of them was the Windows boot-disk), and Fedora hung on start-up... Restarted and tried Windows and that also stopped just after I had selected it in Grub (probably couldn't find the boot-loader)... But it worked when I changed the boot-order in BIOS. So to change between Fedora and Windows, I have to change between Compatible mode and Enhanced mode and change the boot-order in BIOS... And they say Linux is a breeze to install...

When I try to start Fedora with Enhanced mode it stops with:
Red Hat nash version 4.2.15 starting
irq169: Nobody Cared!
Handlers:
[<c026201b>](ide_intr+0x0/0x159)
[<c026201b>](ide_intr+0x0/0x159)
Disabling IRQ#169
ata3: Disabling port

I get this also when it boots up properly, but after ata3: Disabling port, it find the logical volume and continues booting.

So do any of the resident Linux-gurus have any ideas what to try...?

Stig

For my 10 cents, use Ubuntu. I recently switched to Ubuntu on my desktop after lots of attempts to give up my windows dependancy with different distros. Ubuntu gets my vote because it has a single disk install with everything you'd want by default, the debian apt-get system (which kicks RPMs ass) and a huge user community and documentation (like Empeg ) with lots of knowledge. The desktop is well polished too. Check out http://www.ubuntuguide.org as it has the HOWTO for any app class youd care to think of.

For me and my desktop, it is hands down the best distribution I have tried.

I have already downloaded and burned Ubuntu on a disc. I just haven't gotten around to installing it yet...

Stig

If you would like some real cd's instead of burned ones check this out:

http://shipit.ubuntulinux.org/

Thanks. I have seen it, but it doesn't take that long to download and I have lots of blank CDs...

Stig