dual boot 2 Linux distros

[utapez]

I have Kubuntu installed on my Dell C800 laptop and it's great but for furthering my knowledge of Linux I want to install Mandrake 10.1 on the 2nd HD that is in the modular media bay. It's address is hdc1 & hdc2. I split this 40G drive in half; the 2nd half is 1 primary partition, formatted as FAT32 and the 1st partion I will give to Mandrake. My question is this, when I go to install/partition the hdc1 for Mandrake and it asks where I want to put the bootloader, where do I put it? MBR,1st partition (forget floppy) or nothing? If I chose nothing and just wanted to add this distro to the already installed GRUB for Kubuntu (add to the menu.lst) how do I access the Mandrake info to add to Kubuntu's menu.lst? After I install Mandrake and do a reboot it's going to boot into Kubuntu, which is fine and I do have Grubconf installed but I don't have the boot/kernel info for Mandrake... How can I best do this? Thanks in advance!

[dylunio]

Ok, when installing Mandrake DON'T install the bootloader.

Once you have installed Mandrake, boot up Kubuntu, and mount the mandrake partition with

su
mkdir -p /mnt/mandrake
mount /dev/hdc1 /mnt/mandrake

Now it's time to edit your /boot/grub/menu.lst in kubuntu, add somthing like:

title Mandrake
kernel (hd2,0)/kernel-2.6.11 root=/dev/hdc1

replace the kernel-2.6.11 with whatever the kernel in /mnt/mandrake/boot/ is, it is usually named vmlinuz.

Save the file and now you should have mandrake added to your menu at boot.

[utapez]

Ok I installed and selected NO bootloader to be installed (made sure NONE was selected) and then at the end of the install it forced me to install a boot loader and there was no way not to, so what has happened it over-wrote my Kubuntu GRUB and I am stuck with Mandrake... how do I access GRUB in Mandrake and add my Kubuntu to the menu.lst. Thank you...I hate getting off on the wrong foot with a distro. Thank you!
PS/I also can't get the network connected, doesn't Mandrake use ifconfig or iwconfig?

[dylunio]

Firstly Mandrake does not use grub, it uses LiLo (LinuxLoader).

Ok login, then open up a terminal and type:

su
[rootpass]
nano -w /etc/lilo.conf

(or use your prefered command line text editor)

Then add:

##stanza for kubuntu
image = /boot/vmlinux #location of kernel
label = kubuntu #name
root = /dev/hda1 #whatever the loction of the kubuntu root partition

replace /dev/hda1 with whichever drive/partition kubuntu is on, and mount the kubuntu partition and check what's in it's /boot directory (so you can put it in the second line of the above).

Then run

su
[rootpass]
/sbin/lilo

As for ifconfig try

su
[rootpass]
/sbin/ifconfig

dylunio

[martinfromdublin]

You can actually change the bootloader in Mandrake/Mandriva to GRUB via the Mandrake ControlCentre (Configure your Conputer). Select the 'Boot' option and you'll then see a drop-down to select the type of bootloader you want to use, LiLo or GRUB. Select GRUB and click 'finish. On the restart, a text-only version of GRUB will appear. Are you able to merge your bootloaders in Kubuntu? I use SuSE 9.2's GRUB bootloader and you have an option in that to merge with other GRUB loaders already on your machine.

Martin,

Dublin, Ireland

PS: Is that a live Kubuntu CD and is yes, how did you install it to your hard drive? I have one of those live disks but never did much with it.

[dylunio]

PS: Is that a live Kubuntu CD and is yes, how did you install it to your hard drive? I have one of those live disks but never did much with it.

I don't think you can install from the kubuntu live cd, since they have an install cd at their website

[martinfromdublin]

Hi Dylunio,

Long time, no speak, would that be the same as Ubuntu? I have a disk of that and can do nothing with it, it screws up my multi-boot system and it messy to install.

Martin,

Dublin, Ireland

[dylunio]

Long time, no speak, would that be the same as Ubuntu? I have a disk of that and can do nothing with it, it screws up my multi-boot system and it messy to install.

Yeah thu same with ubuntu, if it screws your multi boot, most likly you installed the bootloader when you didn't want to, you can get ubuntu not to install it, but only after going through 5pages of warnings to install one. Yes I do agree the install interface is messy.

[utapez]

when I put in the locale of my kernel:

/dev/hda1/vmlinuz-2.6.10-5-386
it spits back that it's not a directory.
?
If I put in the same info without the /dev/hda1, it says no such file or directory.
the entry is this:

image=/dev/hda1/vmlinuz-2.6.10-5-386
label="kubuntu"
root=/dev/hda1
initrd=/dev/hda1/initrd.img-2.6.10-5-386

Thank you!
Ps/I did mount the drive but had to create an entry in fstab

[Seren]

That syntax in menu.lst or grub.conf doesn't look right. I think having a /dev/hdxn-style device name and a directory path immediately following it won't work. Here's how my grub menu file is set up to boot Mandrake:


title linux
kernel (hd0,6)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda7 devfs=nomount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda8 splash=silent
initrd (hd0,6)/boot/initrd.img

title 2611-6
kernel (hd0,6)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.11-6mdk root=/dev/hda7 devfs=nomount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda8 splash=silent
initrd (hd0,6)/boot/initrd-2.6.11-6mdk.img

title 2611-12
kernel (hd0,6)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.11-12mdk root=/dev/hda7 devfs=nomount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda8 splash=silent
initrd (hd0,6)/boot/initrd-2.6.11-12mdk.img