Dual boot

[liamkincaid25]

Greetings to all!
I have been using linux for about 2 months now (just loaded different flavors used them, wipe them and installed a new one to test) . I just want to have a dual boot system with the flavors I like the most. So far I like LINUX OS 2007 , DEDIAN ETCH and Open Suse. I have linuxOS2007 in one machine and debian etch on another.I will like to put a second Linux on each machine (just to test and see if I like them) to avoid erasing and installing a new system every time. I have tried it with help elsewhere but my last attempt was fruitless as the previous ones. Reading around the net I found out that in order to be succesfull you need to prepare the hard disk with the partitions before installing the OS. Almos all the times I was told to install the OS and the install the disc for the second OS and run the install normally . All the times thsi caused the first OS to be erased leaving only the second one. I have a pc with Debian etch on it ( and it took and awful amount of time to install) to which I would like to install a second linux OS . Is there a way to do this without erasing it first?(because as I already explained I do not know why it took a long time for debain to install and if I can avoid that it will be great) . My knowledge concerning linux and its terminology is quite limited at this time , but I am willing to make any attemp to make this work. Any help will be appreciated. Thank you

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

Its very easy to setup multiboot system. I have Windows XP + 6 Linux distros in my test machine and I keep on re-installing new distros most of the time. 7-10 GB is enough for almost all distros and one can create 3 Primary + 1 Extended and 11 or more Logical Partitions inside extended partitions.
Boot up from PartedMagic LiveCD, shrink existing and create new partitions. PartedMagic is one of the best partition manager.
I would suggest you to post output of fdisk -l command before changing partition structure.

su -
/sbin/fdisk -l

[khafa]

you can shrink the actual partition to make room for the new OS to install. then you install the new OS to the free space you just created.
PartedMagic is a good candidate for shrinking partitions PartedMagic.
you can post the output of the following command so that people can tell you how to do

/sbin/fdisk -l

Edit- oops

[liamkincaid25]

Hi and Welcome !

Its very easy to setup multiboot system. I have Windows XP + 6 Linux distros in my test machine and I keep on re-installing new distros most of the time. 7-10 GB is enough for almost all distros and one can create 3 Primary + 1 Extended and 11 or more Logical Partitions inside extended partitions.
Boot up from PartedMagic LiveCD, shrink existing and create new partitions. PartedMagic is one of the best partition manager.
I would suggest you to post output of fdisk -l command before changing partition structure.

su -
/sbin/fdisk -l

Thank you for your quick answer. This is what I got from the command line


herbert:~# /sbin/fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hdb: 40.0 GB, 40000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4863 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 4658 37415353+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 4659 4863 1646662+ 5 Extended
/dev/hdb5 4659 4863 1646631 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Surely hope this time things work out. I wil wait until your further instructions DEvils Casper or khafa to procede any further.

[yancek]

If you are using Parted Magic to do this, I would suggest you go to this link and read through it a few times to become familiar with it:
PartedMagic - Parted Magic - Using G Parted

If this has been your setup all along, you only have one partition on which to install an OS and that would be why each one writes over the previous. As Devils Casper indicated, you can creat up to four primary partitions (one of which can be an extended, which you have=hdb2). The extended cannot hold any OS but can hold a number of logical partitions where you can install an OS.
After reading the above link, I think you will see that your best option is to delete the extended and swap partitions, resize hdb1 and create new partitions from there. Always read carefully before you click!

[liamkincaid25]

If you are using Parted Magic to do this, I would suggest you go to this link and read through it a few times to become familiar with it:
PartedMagic - Parted Magic - Using G Parted

If this has been your setup all along, you only have one partition on which to install an OS and that would be why each one writes over the previous. As Devils Casper indicated, you can creat up to four primary partitions (one of which can be an extended, which you have=hdb2). The extended cannot hold any OS but can hold a number of logical partitions where you can install an OS.
After reading the above link, I think you will see that your best option is to delete the extended and swap partitions, resize hdb1 and create new partitions from there. Always read carefully before you click!

I read the page several times and it was very interesting. But I will like to have some coaching because I have tried to do this so many times and always something goes wrong. I am sure after I am done with it the first time the rest will be more easy.

[liamkincaid25]

I need somebody , no just anybody , you know I need someone , helppppppppp ( like THE BEATLES) . I just do not want to start from scratch again.

[Jonathan183]

Run

df -h

to determine used/free space on hard drive partitions.

[yancek]

Looking at your output from the fdisk -l command, it seems your extended partition (sdb2) in which you only have your swap partition (sdb5) is too small a partition to install a full OS. Most of your hardrive is occupied by sda1 so you should be able to shrink that and create free space for another partition.

You need to also install grub to the /boot partition of whatever partition you install your new OS to. This way your current grub will not be overwritten.

[liamkincaid25]

Run

df -h

to determine used/free space on hard drive partitions.

This is the result for the available space

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdb1 36G 3.7G 30G 12% /
tmpfs 316M 0 316M 0% /lib/init/rw
udev 10M 52K 10M 1% /dev
tmpfs 316M 0 316M 0% /dev/shm