Hi Guys,
I need to install two Linux OS on the same machine I am running FC3 at
the moment but I want to install SUSE 9.3 also.
Is there a Linux software or command that allows me to do that,
something along the lines of partition magic?
GNU partman lets you resize most partitions. Careful though, make sure there's
no (hidden) corruption. Run partition checkers on everything beforehand.
- Marcel
> Hi Guys,
> I need to install two Linux OS on the same machine I am running FC3 at
> the moment but I want to install SUSE 9.3 also.
> Is there a Linux software or command that allows me to do that,
> something along the lines of partition magic?
>
> Best regards
> Luis
>
>
> GNU partman lets you resize most partitions. Careful though, make sure
there's {Quote hidden}
> no (hidden) corruption. Run partition checkers on everything beforehand.
> - Marcel
>
> Luis.MoreiraKILLspamjet.uk (Luis Moreira) wrote:
>
> > Hi Guys,
> > I need to install two Linux OS on the same machine I am running FC3 at
> > the moment but I want to install SUSE 9.3 also.
> > Is there a Linux software or command that allows me to do that,
> > something along the lines of partition magic?
> >
> > Best regards
> > Luis
> >
> >
>
>
>
Hi Marcel,
The partition checkers you mentioned, are they included on the
distribution or I have to downloaded them?
Is this the normal program (Parted) that everyone normally uses?
Another question you may be able to answer, to install a new hard drive
is just a question of mounting it or it involves something else?
Thanks for the help
Best regards
Luis
Luis Moreira .....luis.moreiraKILLspam.....jet.uk
tel. 01235464615
JET PSU Department
UKAEA Culham Division
J20/1/55, Culham Science Centre
Abingdon
Oxfordshire
OX14 3DB
Whether or not parted is installed already depends on your distribution and
the choices you made during the installation. Any distribution worth its salt
will have it available as a package though.
Normally, people use fdisk for partitioning, but that doesn't resize/move
partitions, so parted (or qtparted, if you want something graphical) are the
only choices pretty much. I do know that Knoppix has qtparted, so that might
be a good way to go for you. That way, you don't have to worry about
unmounting a partition on a live install. Just pop in the knoppix disk, check
the partitions (fsck.*) and run qtparted.
To get a second drive going, you need to partition it (fdisk or parted) and
then format the partitions (mkfs.*). Then you can go ahead and mount them
(directly or via /etc/fstab).
- Marcel
> Hi Marcel,
> The partition checkers you mentioned, are they included on the
> distribution or I have to downloaded them?
> Is this the normal program (Parted) that everyone normally uses?
> Another question you may be able to answer, to install a new hard drive
> is just a question of mounting it or it involves something else?
> Thanks for the help
> Best regards
> Luis
>
> Luis Moreira
> luis.moreiraspam_OUTjet.uk
> tel. 01235464615
> JET PSU Department
> UKAEA Culham Division
> J20/1/55, Culham Science Centre
> Abingdon
> Oxfordshire
> OX14 3DB
>
>
On Wed, 2005-09-07 at 08:53 +0100, Luis Moreira wrote:
> Hi Guys,
> I need to install two Linux OS on the same machine I am running FC3 at
> the moment but I want to install SUSE 9.3 also.
> Is there a Linux software or command that allows me to do that,
> something along the lines of partition magic?
>
Yast includes some tools for repartitioning disks, but I've not used
them myself.
If you have spare space on the disk then Yast certainly does allow you
to create new patiotions in the unused space.
Luis,
I believe now you're getting a bit confused. Grub (GRand Unified Bootloader)
is just that - a boot loader. This is the small program that resides in the
first sector of your harddrive that takes over the job of launching your
actual operating system. It has nothing to do with the actual partitioning of
your drive.
Of course, once you have both SuSE and FC3 (or whatever else) installed, you
should set up Grub to give you a nice menu when you boot up, where you can
select which distribution you'd like to boot into.
- Marcel
> Hi Guys,
> I just had a look at GRUB, will this do the job? Is it better or worse?
>
> Best regards
> Luis
>
> Luis Moreira
> RemoveMEluis.moreiraTakeThisOuTjet.uk
> tel. 01235464615
> JET PSU Department
> UKAEA Culham Division
> J20/1/55, Culham Science Centre
> Abingdon
> Oxfordshire
> OX14 3DB
>
>
> I just had a look at GRUB, will this do the job? Is it better or worse?
>>Whether or not parted is installed already depends on your distribution
>>and
>>the choices you made during the installation. Any distribution worth its
>>salt
>>will have it available as a package though.
>>
I came onto this discussion a little bit late, and may be missing the
point. But on the off chance that it will be helpful I'll just throw in
my two cents. The system rescue CD (which can be downloaded at http://www.sysrescd.org) is about as helpful a tool with Linux as I have
found. It contains, among a lot of other useful things, parted.
Luis,
I would suggest looking at the default file that is generated by your
distribution's installer. This file is going to be /boot/grub/menu.lst or
/boot/grub/grub.conf , most likely. Look through it - the syntax is fairly
straightforward. The only thing to pay attention to really is the fact that
there are two different schemes for referring to drives and partitions. I'm
sure any grub howto you can find online will point this out and explain it
better than I could right now. Once you've read through a tutorial or two, you
should be able to set up the menu the way you want it.
- Marcel
> Hi Marcel,
> This leads me to a new question if I may, how do you configure GRUB to
> give you that initial menu?
> Regards
> Luis
>
> Luis Moreira
> RemoveMEluis.moreiraTakeThisOuTjet.uk
> tel. 01235464615
> JET PSU Department
> UKAEA Culham Division
> J20/1/55, Culham Science Centre
> Abingdon
> Oxfordshire
> OX14 3DB
>
>
On Wed, 2005-09-07 at 10:10 -0400, marcelEraseME.....carrietech.com wrote:
> Luis,
> I would suggest looking at the default file that is generated by your
> distribution's installer. This file is going to be /boot/grub/menu.lst or
> /boot/grub/grub.conf , most likely. Look through it - the syntax is fairly
> straightforward. The only thing to pay attention to really is the fact that
> there are two different schemes for referring to drives and partitions. I'm
> sure any grub howto you can find online will point this out and explain it
> better than I could right now. Once you've read through a tutorial or two, you
> should be able to set up the menu the way you want it.
> - Marcel
The think to watch out for is if the existing distro has a small
partition for /boot, then SuSE may try to reformat this and thus destroy
the existing configuration information, kernel and initrd files.
I tried to install SuSE 9.2 alongside an exisiting SuSE 9.1 installation
and found out about this the hard way. Luckily the 9.2 installation
went without hitch so loosing the 9.1 related boot files didn't matter
in the end.
> Hi Guys,
> I need to install two Linux OS on the same machine I am running FC3 at
> the moment but I want to install SUSE 9.3 also.
> Is there a Linux software or command that allows me to do that,
> something along the lines of partition magic?
There are several, like grub, and lilo. They are built in, they will ask
you about it when you install the second one. Read all the available
info to avoid destroying your old installation.
> Hi Guys,
> I just had a look at GRUB, will this do the job? Is it better or worse?
grub is a boot manager. It allows you to choose what os boots. But first
you have to install the second (third, etc) os. Then you tell grub which
to boot, after how long, with what keypress etc. So first you make room
(partition) using parted, then you run the install of the new os onto
the new partition(s) or disk(s), and then you edit the grub config to
tell it which os to boot.
>> I need to install two Linux OS on the same machine I am running FC3 at
>> the moment but I want to install SUSE 9.3 also.
>> Is there a Linux software or command that allows me to do that,
>> something along the lines of partition magic?
>
> There are several, like grub, and lilo.
Grub and lilo are boot managers, suitable for picking which vmunix
image you want to run.
If you want to run two rather different unix DISTRIBUTIONS, you'll
also PROBABLY want to keep other parts of the filesystem separate,
since distributions these days "personalize" more than just the
kernel. I think that in theory, unix can do this without having
unique partitions for each distribution, but I rather doubt that
the simplified install procedures will set that up, and some sort
of partition manager may be the easiest way to implement it. (The
standard partition setup for hard drives gives you four partitions,
and some "virtual partition" managers will allow many more, stored
in some alternate place and 'swapped into' the standard partition
areas as requested. I don't know which, if any, boot managers include
such a partition manager.)
Even with separate partitions for the unix distributions, you can
probably share some disk space like /user and the swap partition...
Alternately, get a hard disk tray and swap disks in an out. Since
the boot and distribution disk space probably runs less than 10g,
you can probably set this up pretty cheaply... And you KNOW that
this can be done...
On Wednesday 07 September 2005 15:53, Luis Moreira wrote:
> I need to install two Linux OS on the same machine I am running FC3 at
> the moment but I want to install SUSE 9.3 also.
> Is there a Linux software or command that allows me to do that,
> something along the lines of partition magic?
Hi,
If you're just trying to experiment with different distros, you might want to
check out some virtual machine software... like for example, QEMU.. Then, you
do not need to fiddle around with partitions, (which can ruin your day if
you're not careful) and just install it in a container file.. It's also able
to run at close to full-speed...
jet.uk (Luis Moreira) wrote:
