[ashuping]

Strange question and not sure it can even be done. I know you can do a dual boot and I got that working, but I want to do Windows XP, Fedora Core 6, and Ubuntu. I know I need to install XP first, but then what? Is it possible to have to different versions of Linux installed? I tried to do XP, then Ubuntu, and then Core, but when I do that Ubuntu vanishes from the loading. And help you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!

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Yes, it can be done. First, you should have /boot be a separate partition, although it is not required. This keeps all the boot files separate from the versions and off the OS partition. When you install the second version, specify that partition, but don't format it. This will allow you to reload the OS and not harm the boot info, whereas if you have /boot on one of the root partitions, then it will be erased if you reload the OS.

If you don't want to do that, then you can copy the files from the first install to the /boot of the second one or vice versa and specify the boot partition as the first one.

If you mount the Ubuntu filesystem manually, you can copy the files from /boot, which are different, then update /boot/grub/menu.lst to have the boot info.

[Kemasa]

Yes, it can be done. First, you should have /boot be a separate partition, although it is not required. This keeps all the boot files separate from the versions and off the OS partition. When you install the second version, specify that partition, but don't format it. This will allow you to reload the OS and not harm the boot info, whereas if you have /boot on one of the root partitions, then it will be erased if you reload the OS.

If you don't want to do that, then you can copy the files from the first install to the /boot of the second one or vice versa and specify the boot partition as the first one.

If you mount the Ubuntu filesystem manually, you can copy the files from /boot, which are different, then update /boot/grub/menu.lst to have the boot info.

[ashuping]

I'm still a bit of a newbie at Linux, can you give me a bit more detailed instructions on how to copy the files, or any of the other tips you provided?

[Kemasa]

If you want to reload, then manually partition the disk with around 100Mb for /boot. With the first load, format the partition, on the second one, don't format it. You can do all the partitioning on the first load. This will do all of what you need, hopefully.

If you want to copy the files manually, mount the other filesystem, if it is not already mounted (use the "df" command to see what is mounted). I don't know the partitioning information, so I can give you specific details. Depending on if you specified it when you did the second load, it could be listed in /etc/fstab, but most likely you did not do that, so you would mount it with a command something like "mount /dev/hda2 /mnt/root", but you need to create the directory "/mnt/root" first and you can use any name that you want.

Once it is mounted, you can go to that directory "cd /mnt/root/boot", look at the files with "ls" and compare that with what is in /boot. Look at the entries in /mnt/root/boot/grub/menu.lst and add those to /boot/grub/menu.lst. You will need to specify which one you want to be the default boot partition. To copy the files, use the command "cp". You may need to specify the real file instead of the link in menu.lst, so use "ls -l" to see what the real file is.

Edited by Kemasa, 24 December 2006 - 09:32 PM.