triple boot question

[viscus]

Hi

Mrs viscus likes Mandrake; I like Fedora Core 2. We have to have XP for work.

We have an Intel 3.4Ghz machine with 1Gb of RAM and 2x 200Gb hard disks.

I want to install all 3 OS's with XP and 1 linux distro on one drive and the other linux distro on the second drive. I want both distros to share a common /home in a separate partition.

Unfortunately, I cannot do this - the second distro installation always overwrites the details for the first distro. It won't allow 2 separate / or /boot partitions (or swap), even on the separate hard disks.

I've RTFM'ed and searched various sources but have not found anything useful - all the dual boot posts tend to be for XP/W2k plus a linux distro.

Can anyone help please?

[tuubaaku]

it definitely works - I've got four OS's on my machine at the moment, with multiple / partitions. I don't have any boot partition at all, but that doesn't matter. Are you trying to set up all your partitions in your first installation? If you are, that may be the problem. Just set your partitions to the size you want for one distro, install it, and then repeat the process for your second one. If that still doesn't work, you could try just using fdisk and telling your distros where to install.

[viscus]

Thanks tuubaaku but I don't think that's the problem.

I used Partition Magic to create a 100GB (for /, /boot, swap and /home) partition on sda and a 10Gb partition on sdb (for /, and /boot of 2nd distro). Partition Magic formatted the partitions as straightforward single ext3 partitions and I used the distro installers to set the /, /boot etc partitions.

I've tried adding /dev/sda3 /boot defaults 1 2 (or whatever) to fstab but that doesn't seem to work either. Editing Grub as root from within Mandrake (the last distro I installed) results in the Boot Configuration tool closing without saving changes.

Any more ideas please?

[junme]

may I sugest put the stubern disto on sdb with home patition on sda2 instal other distro on sda1 use same home
ie windozer partion 1 2nd distro 2nd pation home third first disrto 2nd hard drive
ie 3 partitions on sda 1 partition on sdb
but home home on 2nd drive would allow most space

[chemikalguy]

I've got the easiest solution of all, provided your case is large enough.

I'm running a Romtec Trios Hard Drive Selector. It has three buttons. You simply press the button of whichever hard drive you want to boot up on. I currently run Win2k, WinXP and Mandrake 9.2, each on its own separate hard drive. That way, if one of them dies, I still have the other two. Plus, I don't have to worry about any weird configuration issues.

I also run an 80GB slave drive on my PC that all three drives can use. That way, I can access files from any one of the three systems. Of course, my case is an Antec full tower!

[solman66]

If it keeps overwriting the 1st install, then its not installing itself to the correct drive.

How are you partitioning the drive during installation? Are you letting the installer take care of that automatically?

Its been a while since i've done mandrake or fedora installs, but i believe both give you an option to do the partitioning yourself. You want this option and it should let you specify which drive to use and where to place the / , /boot, /home, etc.