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UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers
Several OS's on a single laptop?
Post 302083925 by Perderabo on Tuesday 8th of August 2006 11:35:36 AM
08-08-2006
Funny you should ask. I lost the drive on my laptop. I have a new 100 GB drive and I will soon rebuild it with as many OS's as I can shove in. I will post a detailed article explaining what steps I used after it's done.
What you want to do is a piece of cake. You will need a really good partition manager like Partition Magic. I am using Acronis Disksuite which is almost as good and a bit cheaper. Most bootloaders will short out if you try that many O S's. But Grub can handle it easily. I have heard of a product called "Boot It!" that might be able to as well. I even downloaded a trial version. But once I understood grub, I will never switch. That is the hard part...grub's documentation is terrible.
Some clues: before you start gather all of the documentation that you can about your hardware. Some of the installers will blindside with questions like "what is the vertical sync rate of your monitor?". One by one, install each OS is a dual boot config with windows. You will learn how much disk space is needed, what questions it will ask, and any other surprises will be exposed. Take notes on how much disk space was consumed in the filesystems with your installation choices. Also, audition the OS to see if you really want it on the final setup. If you can't get each of them to work in a dual boot config, you won't have a chance with the multi config.
The really hard part is the limited number of primary partitions. But you won't even consume them all. Use logical partitions where ever possible. Start with windows in a primary partition using NTFS and also with an E drive in a logical partition using FAT32. Linux can mount that too, possibly as /driveE to pass stuff around among the O S's. Consider having a logical partition for linux swap and for a (ext3) /tmp. All of the linux's can share these saving disk space. Linux will happily install completely in logical partitions. This will leave you with two free primaries. Install BSD in one of them. I don't let grub boot BSD natively, I chainload to the BSD bootloader, but it's your choice.
You will have a primary partition left over! If you have the disk space you can install another BSD or Solaris.
What you want to do is a piece of cake. You will need a really good partition manager like Partition Magic. I am using Acronis Disksuite which is almost as good and a bit cheaper. Most bootloaders will short out if you try that many O S's. But Grub can handle it easily. I have heard of a product called "Boot It!" that might be able to as well. I even downloaded a trial version. But once I understood grub, I will never switch. That is the hard part...grub's documentation is terrible.
Some clues: before you start gather all of the documentation that you can about your hardware. Some of the installers will blindside with questions like "what is the vertical sync rate of your monitor?". One by one, install each OS is a dual boot config with windows. You will learn how much disk space is needed, what questions it will ask, and any other surprises will be exposed. Take notes on how much disk space was consumed in the filesystems with your installation choices. Also, audition the OS to see if you really want it on the final setup. If you can't get each of them to work in a dual boot config, you won't have a chance with the multi config.
The really hard part is the limited number of primary partitions. But you won't even consume them all. Use logical partitions where ever possible. Start with windows in a primary partition using NTFS and also with an E drive in a logical partition using FAT32. Linux can mount that too, possibly as /driveE to pass stuff around among the O S's. Consider having a logical partition for linux swap and for a (ext3) /tmp. All of the linux's can share these saving disk space. Linux will happily install completely in logical partitions. This will leave you with two free primaries. Install BSD in one of them. I don't let grub boot BSD natively, I chainload to the BSD bootloader, but it's your choice.
You will have a primary partition left over! If you have the disk space you can install another BSD or Solaris.
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LEARN ABOUT PLAN9
wren
WREN(3) Library Functions Manual WREN(3) NAME
wren, ata - hard disk interface SYNOPSIS
bind #H[drive] /dev bind #w[target[.lun]] /dev /dev/hd0disk /dev/hd0partition /dev/sd0disk /dev/sd0partition ... DESCRIPTION
The hard disk interfaces (wren, #w, is a SCSI disk; ata, #H, is an IDE or ATA disk) serve a one-level directory giving access to the hard disk partitions. The parameter to attach defines the numerical SCSI target and logical unit number or the IDE drive number to access. Both default to zero. Each partition name is prefixed by hd and the numeric drive identifier. The partition always exists and covers the entire disk. The size of each partition as reported by stat(2) is the number of bytes in the partition, so the size of is the size of the entire disk. The partition also always exists; it is the last block on the disk for SCSI, second to last for IDE. If it contains valid partition data, those partitions will be visible as well. Every time the device is bound, the partitions are updated to reflect any changes in the parti- tion file. The format of the partition file is the string plan9 partitions on a line, followed by partition specifications, one per line, consisting of a name and textual strings for the block start and limit for each partition on the disk. The program prep(8) writes the partition table for the disk; its use is preferred to writing it by hand. SEE ALSO
prep(8), scsi(3) SOURCE
/sys/src/9/port/devwren.c /sys/src/9/pc/devata.c WREN(3)