[lug] Dual Boot Redhat 8 / Redhat Enterprise

[hugh at math.byu.edu]

> I sent this a week ago but never saw it come up.  (Netscape problems?)
>
> We have old stuff on Redhat 8.
> That doesn't support USB 2.0
> We use USB 2.0 external harddrives and USB 2.0 DVD writer for backups.
> To load or backup our software takes 6 hours over the network (4-5 gig).
>
> The Servers arrive with Redhat Enterprise; we wipe and load Redhat 8.
> Could I set it up to Dual Boot? And load Redhat 8.0 along with Enterprise?
> Then bring it up on Enterprise, copy the software directly from the DVD or
> harddrive, then reboot to 8?
>

Yes, rather easily.  You'd need to boot from alternative media, make room
on the disk for RH8.  Install redhat 8 into your newly available
partitions.  Then you just need to decide which grub.conf is authoritative
and then add the others boot info to the authoritative grub.conf.

If the purpose of the RHEL is only to be able to do a one time load of
software, I'd look in to using a bootable distro (e.g. knoppix) to do the
copying.  So you'd nuke the RHEL and install rh8.  Then boot from your
distro, mount the rh8 partitions, and then copy over the software.

I'm surprised that RH8 doesn't support a dvd drive.  I would have thought
usb 2.0 was possible too.



> Am I mad?

For wanting to dual boot two linux distros?  No.  Generally?  Well, you do
work on computers for a living.  :)


> --
> Gordon Golding
> Information Specialist