Steve Scrimpshire Posted June 4, 2003 Report Share Posted June 4, 2003 Ok, sorry if this is an easy question I could've found the answer to elsewhere, but I've Googled and searched here and I'm still confused on how to do this. I'm sure the two releases cannot share a / partition (if they can, I don't want them to). I'd like to reinstall 8.1 on my spare 15 Gig, so that I can still share the network, since I'm having problems in 9.1 with that, but I *love* 9.1 and would like to still keep it and try to work my way through the problems, to eventually get rid of 8.1. Is this possible? I use lilo and don't have any 3rd party partitioning software, so I'd like to be able to set it up with diskdrake. If I choose the mountpoint / in the installation of 8.1 on the 2nd hard drive, it tells me that the mountpoint already exists. I found this page which seems helpful: http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3A891...oalhaven.net.au but I have a question about it. How do I get past diskdrake to install lilo on the second harddrive (/dev/hdb) with 8.1? On the main hard drive (/dev/hda) I have Win XP/Win2K/MDK 9.1. I want the same linux partitions on each drive (/, /usr, /swap, /home), but I don't want them sharing, except maybe the swap. Will this mess up my partition table? My partition table is already screwy for some reason (It starts with like /dev/hda6 or something like that. I'm not on my Linux box right now). I'm using reiserfs in 9.1 and would like to use it in 8.1 also. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VeeDubb Posted June 4, 2003 Report Share Posted June 4, 2003 I may be way off here, but my understnding is that all you need to do is this: load put the installer for whithcever os youwant first, go through custom disk partitioning, and set up you partitions the way you want them for that OS. My understanding is that your mount points are handled by the fstab of each distro, so you can have the same partion mounted in different places on different distros. then once that's all up and running, put in the disk for the next OS, do the hokey pokey and select custom disk partitioning again. Now build your partitions in the unpartitioned half of your hard drivew and selectyour mount points. If you want to share /home (not a bad idea) you would just select the same partiotn that is your home for the first one and mount it as /home So, your hard drive (if you don't share /home) might look something like hda1, hda2,hda3,hda4,hda5,hda6,hda7 you can do it in any order you want, but the "ideal" order IMHO would be to have the first OS use hda1 as / hda2 as /mnt/whatever hda3 as /usr hda4 as /mnt/whatever2 hda5 as swap hda6 as /mnt/whatever3 hda7 as /home then the second distro would mount the following hda1 as /mnt/whatever hda2 as / hda3 as /whatever2 hda4 as /usr hda5 swap hda6 /home hda7 /mnt/whatever3 There is no reason why the have to mount the same partitions the same way, and if you don't want them to mount eachother's partition under mount, then don't. The two advanteges to this are your partitions are even and odd, with root at the beginning followed by /usr then /home whitch is how the installer does it by default if you iclude a /usr AND if you do it this way, when you are ready to go to one OS or the other, you can resiz your partitions without losing proportion or order. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VeeDubb Posted June 4, 2003 Report Share Posted June 4, 2003 Also, personaly, Iwould share a /home that way your files are all "right there" reguardless of what you boot and its one less thing to monkey with when you go down to one OS. Also, as for lilo, basicaly, you want a stanza for 8.2 and one for 9.1 and you want lilo installed to the mbr. If you have trouble figureing out what to put in each stanza, just copy the installed lilo.conf stanza fromt he first os into the one installed by the second of and run /sbin/lilo and you should have both. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted June 4, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 4, 2003 Thanks, VeeDubb. I guess my brain is just fried from trying to deal with these two problems/issues: http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php?t=5464 http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php?t=5528 My fiancee is not too happy with me right now, either because I'm obsessed with them (the issues). :wink: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VeeDubb Posted June 4, 2003 Report Share Posted June 4, 2003 Wow, I realy need to learn to read. didn't see that "two harddrives": thing. should still be the same though. elt me read the other posts and se what nuggets of knowledge I can slip out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted June 4, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 4, 2003 I noticed that you were assuming one hard drive (which I didn't think was possible, actually), but I translated it to my 2 HD case in my head and said "Well, DUH. That was easier than I thought it would be." I was just afraid of screwing up my partition table more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted June 5, 2003 Report Share Posted June 5, 2003 Steve, regarding how to run 2 separate linux distros, here's a faq I wrote on the issue.. http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php?p=36825 I guess I'm a little confused as to what your /mount issue is.. When you install 8.1 on your second drive, I don't see how it has anything to do with your 9.1 on your first drive. If your partition table is goofy to start with, it may explain your problems. Can you clear the drive and start over? That's something you really should do anyways. Are you using the custom partitioning feature during install of 8.1? At the begining of install, you would select the expert mode. You should be able to specifically select a partition and assign it as a mount point. hdb6 is mounted at /. Since your 9.1 is experiemental and you are trying to figure things out, I would simply have a separate /home and separate everything for now. The only thing I would share would be the swap. As a last resort, you can disconnect your first drive, install 8.1, reconnect your first drive. You may have to reset your bios to defaults after the reconnect to get things back to normal. Then you can manually edit your 8.1 fstab file to set everything to hdb rather than hda. PS Snuggle up with your honey and watch a movie. Gotta keep the balance in life :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted June 5, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 5, 2003 Well, it actually helps me to share my /home directory since my first drive with 9.1 on it is an 80 gig and the second HD is actually only an 8 gig...I forgot I had traded my fiancee my 15 gig for her 8 gig. I tried to install 8.1 today and ran into some trouble that it took me forever to figure out, but I think I'll have a handle on it tomorrow. Thanks for the link to the tutorial. I've actually DID format my drive after my partition table got screwy, but it stayed screwy. Here's an example of what I mean: /dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c vfat iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0 /dev/hda5 /mnt/win_d vfat iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0 /dev/hda6 / reiserfs notail 1 1 /dev/hda7 swap swap defaults 0 0 /dev/hda8 /usr reiserfs notail 1 2 /dev/hda9 /home reiserfs notail 1 2 /dev/hdb1 /mnt/lin2 reiserfs notail,defaults 1 2 /dev/hdb5 /mnt/lin3 reiserfs notail,defaults 1 2 /dev/hdb6 /mnt/lin4 reiserfs notail,defaults 1 2 /dev/hdb7 swap swap defaults 0 0 Where's /dev/hda2, /dev/hda3, /dev/hda4, etc? Anyway, now I've invested too much time to worry about it for it now, since it works. If I run into trouble and need to reinstall Linux, then I'll format both drives and start over. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted June 5, 2003 Report Share Posted June 5, 2003 That's not screwy.. :) hda1-4 = primary partitions hda5-? = logical partitions (exists in an extended primary) You apparently have hda1 - primary hda2 - extended hda5-9 - logical It's a good setup.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted June 5, 2003 Author Report Share Posted June 5, 2003 Whoa thanks. I guess I am pretty much clueless when it comes to alot of stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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