installation of WS Ser. in mupltple OS platform

[p_43]

Hi greetings from Bulgaria .
I've got a home PC with two OS (ws xp & red hat 9.0 ). I want to install ws server 2003 ,
but don't know how to conifigure the Grub bootlaoder to load the three OS: WS XP
Red Hat
WS Serv. 2003

I will appreciate your futh assistance
Regards,
Sofia , Bulgaria 08.03.2004

[Rune J. Winje]

I don't know the "Grub bootloader" you are referring to, but it should be possible to install the various OS'es on different partitions.

However, if your reason for wanting to install more than one OS is to be able to support/test the various OS'es, then it is generally a better idea to go for virtual machines, like VMWare workstation (http://www.vmware.com/landing/ws4_home.html) or similar products.

The benefit being that all OS'es can run simultaneously, can communicate via network and that each virtual machine is generally a big file that can be easily backed up and transported in it's "unmounted" state.


Cheers,
Rune

[Steven Clementi]

VMware Workstation also runs on top of Windows or Linux. The problem there is that the virtual environment it not necessarily the needed since you are trying this on your "home" PC.

What are the specs of the PC? To run VMware with any decent performance, you will need at least 512MB ram and a nice P4. I would have at least 1GB ram and a P4 2.8GhzC HT Processor.

Now, to your question...

If you install Windows 2003 ontop of a machine with XP and RHL9 on it already, you are sure to change the boot loader to the Windows loader NTLDR. If you don't mind wiping your machine, the order of install should be...

XP, then 2003, then RHL9

On the other hand, if you go/get back into Linux and use Disk Druid or similar, you should be able to make GRUB the default boot loader once again.

Do you already have an entry for XP? If so, when you boot up, you have the option of editting the GRUB.conf file directly. Just add another section for the Windows 2003 partition.

If not, just vi your grub.conf file... /boot/grub/grub.conf

If your running xwindows, you can probably open up a gui to do it, I have not touched Linux in a few months so I am a bit rusty.


The last option is to continue to use NTLDR. It should automatically add an entry for Linux and should be there after you finish the 2k3 install.

Steven