[clue-tech] Dual booting between linux.

[Charles W Downing]

Dave,

When reading this, keep in mind that I am a retired engineer, sometimes 
programmer, user, not a systems admin.

Right now, I have Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope (9.04, I think) and Linux Mint 
5 on a notebook which I bought from System76.  Ubuntu Hardy was there 
first, but when it "automagically" upgraded to Jaunty (64 bit), I 
started looking around for something that wasn't so buggy.  I put Linux 
Mint 5 on a 40g partition on the same HD.  The installer took care of 
setting up grub and keeping things separate.  I have not changed 
anything with the os mix--grub just works ok as is.  Linux Mint lets me 
see and access all my Ubuntu partitions, but Ubuntu doesn't recognize 
the Linux Mint partition.

The only gripe I have is that when Linux Mint upgrades to a new kernel 
version, it changes grub to act as if Linux Mint is the only OS on the 
box.  Of course, this can be fixed by editing menu.lst in the grub folder. 

I keep saying to myself that one week I'll get enough time to eliminate 
Ubuntu entirely since Linux Mint is LTS until 2011.

David L. Anselmi wrote:
> So dual booting Linux and Windows has been solved for years.  It's 
> easiest to put a Linux boot loader in the MBR and let it run either 
> linux or chain load windows.
>
> What about dual booting 2 linux distros?  Each distro handles its 
> kernels, initramfs, grub config, etc just fine.  But since they don't 
> know about each other it seems likely they may step on each other.
>
> Even making each grub config aware of the other partition seems error 
> prone if each distro wants to update whats there.
>
> So how about putting grub on both the MBR and on each partition's boot 
> sector?  Let each distro own its partition and then the MBR only has 
> to chain load one of those.
>
> Anyone done this and been happy with it?  Anyone have a better way?  
> The goal something that each distro manages itself so the user doesn't 
> have to fiddle with anything during upgrades.
>
> Thanks!
> Dave
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-- 
Chuck Downing
Highlands Ranch, Colorado USA