Dual Boot

I am new to the world of Linux. I have loaded SuSe on a computer. It works
well. I accepted the default partitioning suggestions. Now I want to
explore Fedora 4. I only have one system available to me. I would like to
try a dual boot system leaving SuSe and adding Fedora 4. The books I have
found talk about GRUB but not in detail. What is the process I need to
follow in order to make this work the way I would like? If I start the
Fedora instalation will it lead me through GRUB? Please advise.

On Sat, 14 Jan 2006 21:09:26 -0500, Ed Lindquist wrote:
[color=blue]
> I am new to the world of Linux. I have loaded SuSe on a computer. It works
> well. I accepted the default partitioning suggestions. Now I want to
> explore Fedora 4. I only have one system available to me. I would like to
> try a dual boot system leaving SuSe and adding Fedora 4. The books I have
> found talk about GRUB but not in detail. What is the process I need to
> follow in order to make this work the way I would like? If I start the
> Fedora instalation will it lead me through GRUB? Please advise.[/color]

You need a separate partition for Fedora, if you don't have one you'll
have to create one by either resizing an existing partition and then
creating a new one or by deleting the existing partition and then
creating a new one for FC and one for whatever you had in the old
partition. You can use the same /home and swap for FC, the only partition
that needs to be unique is /. Also you can mount the SUSE / partition
under FC4 so that you can use it to copy any configuration files that
you've modified, I'd call the mount point /suse if I were you.

If you have a spare partition then creating a
dual boot is easy. When you install FC make sure that you select the
advanced options when installing the boot loader and then have it install
it's boot loader to the root partition instead of to the MBR (SUSE is
already using the MBR). After you've done your install then you need to
edit /etc/grub.conf on the primary OS, which in your case is SUSE. You
need to add a chanin load to the FC4 boot loader which will look like this,

title FC4
rootnoverify (hd0,7)
chainloader +1

In the above example the root of FC4 is on /dev/sda8. GRUB calls /dev/hda
or /dev/sda (depending on if it's a parallel ATA or Serial ATA disk), hd0.
It calls partition 1, 0 so you'll have to subtract 1 from the partition
number of the FC4 / partition.

If you have the room you could install another hard drive [prices are quite
low now] and install Fedora on it. Set that drive as the master and let
Fedora put Grub on its MBR. Then after the installation is done you can edit
grub.conf to add a stanza for your SuSe on the slave drive.

It's also a low risk method -- it anything goes wrong you can just reconnect
the SuSe drive as the master.

Dr. G.


In article <v9iyf.526$0Z.179@fe04.lga>, Ed Lindquist <edw098@charter.net>
wrote:[color=blue]
>I am new to the world of Linux. I have loaded SuSe on a computer. It works
>well. I accepted the default partitioning suggestions. Now I want to
>explore Fedora 4. I only have one system available to me. I would like to
>try a dual boot system leaving SuSe and adding Fedora 4. The books I have
>found talk about GRUB but not in detail. What is the process I need to
>follow in order to make this work the way I would like? If I start the
>Fedora instalation will it lead me through GRUB? Please advise.[/color]

General Schvantzkoph wrote:
[color=blue]
> On Sat, 14 Jan 2006 21:09:26 -0500, Ed Lindquist wrote:
>[color=green]
>> I am new to the world of Linux. I have loaded SuSe on a computer. It
>> works
>> well. I accepted the default partitioning suggestions. Now I want to
>> explore Fedora 4. I only have one system available to me. I would like
>> to
>> try a dual boot system leaving SuSe and adding Fedora 4. The books I
>> have
>> found talk about GRUB but not in detail. What is the process I need to
>> follow in order to make this work the way I would like? If I start the
>> Fedora instalation will it lead me through GRUB? Please advise.[/color]
>
> You need a separate partition for Fedora, if you don't have one you'll
> have to create one by either resizing an existing partition and then
> creating a new one or by deleting the existing partition and then
> creating a new one for FC and one for whatever you had in the old
> partition. You can use the same /home and swap for FC, the only partition
> that needs to be unique is /. Also you can mount the SUSE / partition
> under FC4 so that you can use it to copy any configuration files that
> you've modified, I'd call the mount point /suse if I were you.
>
> If you have a spare partition then creating a
> dual boot is easy. When you install FC make sure that you select the
> advanced options when installing the boot loader and then have it install
> it's boot loader to the root partition instead of to the MBR (SUSE is
> already using the MBR). After you've done your install then you need to
> edit /etc/grub.conf on the primary OS, which in your case is SUSE. You
> need to add a chanin load to the FC4 boot loader which will look like
> this,
>
> title FC4
> rootnoverify (hd0,7)
> chainloader +1
>
> In the above example the root of FC4 is on /dev/sda8. GRUB calls /dev/hda
> or /dev/sda (depending on if it's a parallel ATA or Serial ATA disk), hd0.
> It calls partition 1, 0 so you'll have to subtract 1 from the partition
> number of the FC4 / partition.[/color]


At this point how could I repartition the drive? It is 120GB and SuSe is
only using 4 GB (if that). The computer only has room for one drive
otherwise I would use a separate drive. It is a pain to swap drives in
this case. I have gotten used to SuSe and like it. How do I "run GRUB"?
It must be on this system because I say it updated recently. In
the/etc/grub.conf
linux:/etc # more grub.conf
setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 (hd0,1) (hd0,1)
setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 (hd0) (hd0,1)
quit
what would it look like with the changes suggested?

Thank you for the advice.

On Tue, 17 Jan 2006 15:49:49 -0500, Ed Lindquist wrote:
[color=blue]
> General Schvantzkoph wrote:
>[color=green]
>> On Sat, 14 Jan 2006 21:09:26 -0500, Ed Lindquist wrote:
>>[color=darkred]
>>> I am new to the world of Linux. I have loaded SuSe on a computer. It
>>> works
>>> well. I accepted the default partitioning suggestions. Now I want to
>>> explore Fedora 4. I only have one system available to me. I would like
>>> to
>>> try a dual boot system leaving SuSe and adding Fedora 4. The books I
>>> have
>>> found talk about GRUB but not in detail. What is the process I need to
>>> follow in order to make this work the way I would like? If I start the
>>> Fedora instalation will it lead me through GRUB? Please advise.[/color]
>>
>> You need a separate partition for Fedora, if you don't have one you'll
>> have to create one by either resizing an existing partition and then
>> creating a new one or by deleting the existing partition and then
>> creating a new one for FC and one for whatever you had in the old
>> partition. You can use the same /home and swap for FC, the only partition
>> that needs to be unique is /. Also you can mount the SUSE / partition
>> under FC4 so that you can use it to copy any configuration files that
>> you've modified, I'd call the mount point /suse if I were you.
>>
>> If you have a spare partition then creating a
>> dual boot is easy. When you install FC make sure that you select the
>> advanced options when installing the boot loader and then have it install
>> it's boot loader to the root partition instead of to the MBR (SUSE is
>> already using the MBR). After you've done your install then you need to
>> edit /etc/grub.conf on the primary OS, which in your case is SUSE. You
>> need to add a chanin load to the FC4 boot loader which will look like
>> this,
>>
>> title FC4
>> rootnoverify (hd0,7)
>> chainloader +1
>>
>> In the above example the root of FC4 is on /dev/sda8. GRUB calls /dev/hda
>> or /dev/sda (depending on if it's a parallel ATA or Serial ATA disk), hd0.
>> It calls partition 1, 0 so you'll have to subtract 1 from the partition
>> number of the FC4 / partition.[/color]
>
>
> At this point how could I repartition the drive? It is 120GB and SuSe is
> only using 4 GB (if that). The computer only has room for one drive
> otherwise I would use a separate drive. It is a pain to swap drives in
> this case. I have gotten used to SuSe and like it. How do I "run GRUB"?
> It must be on this system because I say it updated recently. In
> the/etc/grub.conf
> linux:/etc # more grub.conf
> setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 (hd0,1) (hd0,1)
> setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 (hd0) (hd0,1)
> quit
> what would it look like with the changes suggested?
>
> Thank you for the advice.[/color]

How is the drive partitioned now? 120G is enough for a multiboot machine.
My laptop has a 100G drive and it's set up to triple boot. Just by way of
example my laptop is partitioned as follows,

NTFS for WinXP 20G
/ (for FC4) 8G
/fc3 (/ for FC3) 8G
/home (shared) 60G
swap 2G (shared)

I don't know what tools are on the SUSE install disk (I've never used
SUSE) but the Mandriva Install disk has a partition resizer on it that can
resize both Linux and Windows partitions. The Fedora installer disk tool
lacks resize capability so you'll have to use Mandriva's or SUSE (assuming
that SUSE can do it). What you should do is download the first CD of the
Mandriva installer. Start the install and go into the disk tool and create
the partitions that you need. After you've shrunk your old partitions and
created the new ones you can abort the Mandriva install and do a Fedora
install. If you have XP on your system you should first run the disk
optimizer to defrag and pack the NTFS partition, this will make it easier
to shrink it.