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[217.169.3.230]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id v10sm7971036wiy.23.2011.12.04.02.20.08 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Sun, 04 Dec 2011 02:20:08 -0800 (PST) From: Mick To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] installing gentoo (multiple OS) Date: Sun, 4 Dec 2011 10:20:59 +0000 User-Agent: KMail/1.13.7 (Linux/3.0.6-gentoo; KDE/4.6.5; x86_64; ; ) References: <201112022355.06767.michaelkintzios@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="nextPart3048589.Xelrp6C7j4"; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; micalg=pgp-sha1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <201112041021.08886.michaelkintzios@gmail.com> X-Archives-Salt: 8b3586dd-af7a-49ac-b1c7-0e2e52658250 X-Archives-Hash: ef510e71b5cc8fb8d640545c6f35398c --nextPart3048589.Xelrp6C7j4 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable As far as I know all/most of these OS will interfere with your MBR and=20 potentially your /boot partition and install their boot code in there. Thi= s=20 is not a problem per se, as long as you are aware of it. Booting from a=20 LiveCD is all you will need to do to fix things. Given the number of OS' that you want to play with I would strongly advise = to=20 consider using virtualbox or any similar virtual machine, running in your=20 favourite OS (e.g. Debian as the host) and then create VM images for each=20 guest OS that you want installed. Performance will be only slightly slower= =20 than booting into these OS separately from BIOS, but on the other hand you= =20 won't need to be repartitioning or zeroing/formatting partitions when you w= ant=20 to get rid of an OS. Also, you may end up running out of partitions - I th= ink=20 SATA used to read up to 15 partitions only. So, with virtualbox you can ad= d=20 new OS images at a click of a button, instead of creating new partitions,=20 moving partitions around and what not. LVM will help with sizing partition= s=20 on the fly, but will add another layer of complexity. Before I give specific OS suggestions below, let me propose a booting=20 architecture for separate partitions for you to consider: Create one 'master' boot partition and install GRUB in it with a LiveCD. I= 'd=20 use legacy GRUB because it is simpler, slimmer and easy to fix. Others may= =20 recommend GRUB2, which installs what looks to me like a mini OS in itself a= nd=20 automates a lot of the configuration. I've been less successful editing th= e=20 boot options from the command line at boot time with GRUB2, but it is more= =20 stable these days. Anyway, both will work fine. Never delete this GRUB ma= ster=20 partition, or you will need a LiveCD to be able to boot again. I'd create one swap partition for all OS except MSWindows, which will creat= e=20 its own paging file, fragment its own NTFS fs, corrupt this paging file wit= hout=20 any help from you and then use up all the partition space and crash! ha, h= a,=20 ha! :)) Well, it's not always that bad, but it has happened here more than= =20 once. With the disk space available to you, you may create more than one swap=20 partition. I seem to recall (could be wrong) with 32bit OS that 128M was t= he=20 amount that would be accessed at a time by the kernel or something similar = =2D=20 so people used to create multiple 128M swap partitions. These days with 64= bit=20 OS and large RAM modules you may not need swap at all, unless you start=20 running http servers, big databases, etc. In any case, I'd set up a 2G swa= p=20 as a minimum and up to the size of your RAM as a maximum. Then if you decide to have separate real partitions on the disk for each OS= =20 instead of VM images, I would install each OS in their own partition withou= t a=20 separate boot partition for each, to keep the number of partitions down. Y= ou=20 will then be able to chainload from your master boot menu.lst any OS boot=20 system. If you will prefer to dual boot MSWindows and at least one main Linux syste= m=20 (which will host your virtual machines) I would refrain from using the=20 MSWindows OS boot system to chainload Linux from it - because it is=20 complicated and messy: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.user/226452 Specifics below. PS. I merely express a view here - how I would go about it. There are=20 probably as many views on the things I suggest above as readers on this=20 mailing list. Thankfully with Linux there's more than one way to skin a ca= t. PPS. No cats were harmed in preparing these suggestions! LOL! :)) On Sunday 04 Dec 2011 08:21:52 srini srini wrote: > @MIck >=20 > I have a 1TB seagate disk drive, which I would like to install... >=20 > 1. Will also have windoze whatever bs it is, since its usage is still in > existence duh! - - If you don't install this/these OS' in a VM, then bear in mind that Vista a= nd=20 Windows 7 create a separate hidden 200MB boot partition. This will eat up = one=20 more partition out of the 15 physical partitions on your SATA drive (you ca= n=20 use LVM if you're planning to exceed the 15). > 2. Surely Debian the universal OS - will have x86-64 image. - GNOME - > Kernel 3.x. - bash This can be a workhorse for your guest OS. It doesn't change often and thi= ngs=20 should *just* work. You can/should store the various OS' images on a separate physical partitio= n. =20 So you can always reinstall/upgrade your Debian without affecting all other= OS. > 3. The Ubuntu - will have 32-bit - image. - XFCE - Kernel 3.x. - bash >=20 > 4. The Slackware vanilla (stable), to get deep into the kernel :) - 32-bit > image - registers and argument handling. - fluxbox - Kernel 2.xx.x - bash =46luxbox is slim but needs a lot of configuration to make it look nice. I= 'd=20 consider Englightenment (e17) from svn because it is both lighter on resour= ces=20 and looks nicer with minimal configuration. > 5. Voiding Gentoo is like keeping the penguin out of ice cap, so will make > space for it. -x86-32 image - KDE - Kernel 3.x. - sh Your Gentoo will take more space than all the binary distros. Depending on= =20 how many DEs you will install I'd bargain for 10-20G. You could have a common home partition for your various OS', but I probably= =20 would not, since I would want to have separate user configurations of=20 potentially the same apps. > 6. Thinking of legacy commercial unix solaris 5/09 (the original unix of > them all) - 32-bit image - CDE - woohoo! >=20 > I know its a bit whimsical, but would love to work on these OS'es except > the #1 in order. >=20 > Yes I have a PC clone, thus MBR. >=20 > Any advise is welcome. HTH. =2D-=20 Regards, Mick --nextPart3048589.Xelrp6C7j4 Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.17 (GNU/Linux) iEYEABECAAYFAk7bSZQACgkQVTDTR3kpaLaxfgCgqc+tHQk9xOD8OnT7O4J2ag8l eCQAn3Pqtocm4a1Z+JVrUfBTIeMrrhwa =AlI/ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --nextPart3048589.Xelrp6C7j4--