[lug] Booting Multiple Linuxes

[D. Stimits]

I have not looked at this in a long time, but there are two ways of
naming partitions, one is with the actual partition designation, e.g.,
hda1 or hdc2; the other is through partition labels (not to be confused
with the name displayed at the lilo prompt or other prompt). The latter
is problematic at times, it involves the partition or volume having a
label, and lilo or other boot loader searching by name instead of
specific number. The goal in this latter case being to reorder or place
drives in any slot or position, moving them around, and having it still
find the right partition by name. But if you fail to embed this
information in the drive or partition itself, it will fail (similar if
two get the same label). I'd strongly advise being certain to use exact
device specification, e.g., hdc2, and not a text label...this might
already be the case, but look closely, lilo will become confused if you
use the kind of label for the volume (versus the title that the user is
prompted with, they are quite different).

D. Stimits, stimits at idcomm.com

Elyse Grasso wrote:
> 
> I think we're confusing each other...
> 
> /dev/hda1 gets mounted as /boot when 7.2 boots, and /dev/hdc1 gets mounted as
> /boot when 7.1 boots. 7.1 doesn't know /dev/hda1 exists and 7.2 doesn't know
> that /dev/hdc1 exists: once they are booted there is no problem. The only
> problem is telling lilo where to find stuff.
> 
> On Monday 07 January 2002 12:21 pm, Peter Hutnick wrote:
> > Elyse Grasso wrote:
> >
> > > I now have a machine with KRUD 7.2 installed on hda and KRUD/RedHat 7.1
> > > installed on kdc.
> > >
> > > Both installations use /boot partitions on their own hard drives.
> > > Anyone have a sample lilo.conf for this situation? lilo seems unhappy
> about
> > > the things I've tried, possibly due the the /boot ambiguity.
> >
> > Well, you can only have one thing called /boot per instance of an OS.
> > So, you will need another name for the "other" OSes /boot in each
> > instance.  So, say that the KRUD /boot is hda1 and the RH /boot is hdc1,
> > call the hdc1 /rhboot (or hell, /mnt/rhboot) in KRUD and call hda1
> > /KRUDboot in RH.
> >
> > To say all this in another way; each OS instance is clear on what /boot
> > is, but they disagree, and I think that it is ambigious in your mind (it
> > isn't to the SW ;-)
> >
> > I don't have a lilo.conf handy, but you need something like:
> >
> > (in KRUD)
> >
> > label=KRUD
> > image=/boot/linux
> >
> > label=RH
> > image=/rhboot/linux
> >
> > (and in RH)
> >
> > label=KRUD
> > image=/KRUDboot/linux
> >
> > label=RH
> > image=/boot/linux
> >
> > (Note that I'm not 100% sure of any of the syntax above, I'm just trying
> > to illustrate the point.)
> >
> > The point here is that both of the above are equivalent when you expand
> > the mount points to devices.
> >
> > I hope I made it better, not worse :-)
> >
> > -Peter
> >
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