Dual Boot 7.2 and 7.3

[Bindumadhava.V]

Hello,

I have a system which is having 7.2 and 7.3 installed on 2 different SCSI HDD. what are the changes to be done in lilo.conf to list both..? Right now it is setto boot with 7.3 only. and lilo is written on MBR of 1st HDD (i.e /dev/sda).

Details:
1st HDD : SDA : Linux 7.2
(/dev/sda1 -boot
/dev/sda3 -root)
2nd HDD : SDB : Linux 7.3
(/dev/sdb1 - boot
/dev/sdb3 - root)

Thanks & Regards
Bindumadhava.V

[Balaji N]

hi

i have never done this with two differnet partitions.

the best thing would be to copy the contents of your boot partition to ur root disk.

1) /dev/sda1 to /dev/sda3 root and /dev/sdb1 to /dev/sdb3 root. in which case ur lilo.conf will look like below.

+++++

image=/boot/img7.2
label=rhl7.2
root=/dev/sda3

image=/boot/img7.3
label=rhl7.3
root=/dev/sdb3

2) or just have only one boot partition and keep the images of both 7.2 and 7.3 on the single boot partittion.


++++++++++++++++++
boot=/dev/sda1

image=/img7.2
label=rhl7.2
root=/dev/sda3
image=/img7.2
label=rhl7.2
root=/dev/sda3
++++++++++++++++++

i would prefer option 2.

others -> correct me if i am wrong.
pls post back ur results.

hth
-balaji

[John Meissner]

I believe either option of your will work both lilo.conf and keeping both on the same drive.

my prefered solution for your problem would be to pick a single distribution. Is there some reason you need to have both distributions of Linux on you computer?

another option would be to just get a bigger hard drive and put both installations on the same drive.

I believe the entries listed in an earlier post are the correct entries to dual boot with mulitple hard disks.

[Sergejs Svitnevs]

Linux 7.2 has LILO A in mbr and boots its kernel by default. Linux 7.3 has LILO B on the partition, configured to boot kernel B.
LILO A should present a menu where you can choose to activate LILO B. LILO B does not need waiting period or menu selections.
The stanca on LILO A should look like this:
other=/dev/sdb1
unsafe

Regards,
Sergejs

[James Wilson_5]

Firstly I would like to agree that you should try and settle on one distro..

Having said that you should use the second option basji presented. (Reclaim sdb1 for normal use.) Just make sure you fix his copy and paste error :)

+++++++++++++++++
boot=/dev/sda1

image=/img7.2
label=rhl7.2
root=/dev/sda3
image=/img7.3
label=rhl7.3
root=/dev/sdb3
++++++++++++++++++

[James Wilson_5]

Sorry Balaji, the memory let me down on getting your name correct in previous post.

[Khalid A. Al-Tayaran]

Hi,

I don't remember the entries but I remember I used a tool in Gnome that configures the startup and run levels...

[Balaji N]

no problem james.
-balaji

[Bindumadhava.V]

Hello all

Thanks a lot for your solutions...

What ever I have tried is the 1st option.

But if I compile lilo, it was not able to find 7.2 image from the /boot which is having 7.3 image.. Because /boot (/dev/sda1)of sda (7.2) was not mounted in 7.3 from which we are editing lilo. So if we give a fstab entry and try to compile lilo..it does.. But obviously this is will not help at the boot time as it doesn't have fstab details..

And i need to check with the 2nd option, once the machine is free.. as some testing was going on 7.3...


Thanks & Regards
Bindumadhava.