Tri booting SuSE, Mandriva and Win XP and a silly question..

[Avi]

Morning all.

I've currently got SuSE 9.2 and WinXP on this machine. I'd like to add Mandriva as a third OS (install from CD) Currently the boot options are "windows", "linux" and "failsafe".
Would the installer for mandriva automatically adjust this to take account of the fact there would then be two linux OSs? Or is there something i need to change before i install?

Cheers!

[dylunio]

What I would do is when you install Mandriva, DO NOT INSTALL A BOOTLOADER.

Then once it is installed, boot SuSE and mount your mandriva partition with

su -
mkdir /mnt/mandriva
mount /dev/hda3 /mnt/mandriva

for this example I am saying that you installed mandriva on /dev/hda3, but when you do this use the partition you installed mandriva on.

then open your /boot/grub/menu.lst up in suse with somthing like pico

su
[root password]
pico /boot/grub/menu.lst

then add a stanza like this:

title Mandriva
kernel (hd0,2)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.8.1-3-386 root=/dev/hda3
initrd (hd0,2)/boot/initrd.img-2.6.8.1-3-386

look in /mnt/mandriva/boot/ for the names of the vmlinuz and initrd filenames. and with the (hd0,2) that is = /dev/hda3. A list of (hd*,*) names are:

/dev/hda1 (hd0,0) First hard disk on first IDE cable, first partition
/dev/hda2 (hd0,1) First hard disk on first IDE cable, second partition
/dev/hda3 (hd0,2) First hard disk on first IDE cable, third partition
/dev/hdb1 (hd1,0) Second hard disk on first IDE cable, first partition
/dev/hdb2 (hd1,1) Second hard disk on first IDE cable, second partition
/dev/hdb3 (hd1,2) Second hard disk on first IDE cable, third partition
/dev/hdc1 (hd2,0) First hard disk on second IDE cable, first partition
/dev/hdc2 (hd2,1) First hard disk on second IDE cable, second partition
/dev/hdc3 (hd2,2) First hard disk on second IDE cable, third partition
/dev/hdd1 (hd3,0) Second hard disk on second IDE cable, first partition
/dev/hdd2 (hd3,1) Second hard disk on second IDE cable, second partition
/dev/hdd3 (hd3,2) Second hard disk on second IDE cable, third partition

I hope this helps

dylunio

[Avi]

I think i understand that. All looks logical enough.

One way to find out...

Cheers!

[Avi]

Midway through the installation i clicked 'skip' where it said it was going to install a bootloader.

Nonetheless, it's come up on the final menu, with a 'configure' button next to it. Nowhere can i find an option to not install it. The options i have are:

Enable ACPI
Force no APIC
Force no local APIC

What do i do now? Or should i have gone for the non-auto installation?

[budman7]

When you click on the Configure buuton, those three options listed are the ones you get.
There should have been an option to install it to the superblock or root partition, or whatever they want to call where you have Ubuntu installed.
For instance, if you are installing to hda5, install the bootloader to hda5.

Hope this helps.