[plug] RH 7.3 and RH 9

Tue Sep 30 12:33:20 WST 2003

----- Forwarded by Richard Meyer/Australia/Contr/IBM on 30/09/2003 12:06 PM
-----

                      Bret Busby                                                                                                    
                      <bret at busby.net>         To:       PLUG <plug at plug.linux.org.au>                                              
                      Sent by:                 cc:                                                                                  
                      plug-admin at plug.l        Subject:  [plug] RH 7.3 and RH 9                                                     
                      inux.org.au                                                                                                   

                      30/09/2003 11:45                                                                                              
                      AM                                                                                                            
                      Please respond to                                                                                             
                      plug                                                                                                          

>Hello, everyone. I have two problems with RH9, that I have installed on
>my computer.

>1. Multiple booting
>I have installed RH 9 in a multiple boot system which already had RH 7.3
>installed. I installed RH 9 as a clean instal in a partition that I
>found that I had, while retaining the RH7.3 installation, which I am
>using, and which is useful, for parallel implementation.

>There is a conflict problem with a /lib/modules file, where the RH 9
>installation finds only the RH 7.3 version. At first, the RH 9 versiopn
>of lilo found only the Win98 OS to load, and not either RH 7.3 or Wn NT.
>When I managed to boot into RH 7.3 using the RH 7.3 boot disk, RH 7.3
>hasd the /lib/modules conflict. With all the problems, I overwrote the
>RH( lio.conf file, with the RH7.3 file, and modified it to include RH 9.
>However, the only way that I can get the computer to properly boot into
>RH 9, is to use the RH 9 boot disk.

You've definitely messed up something here. I suspect that you're telling
it that the root and the kernel are from different releases. Make sure that
all references to a particular distro are in sync. ie (now I don't have a
Linux box here and I'm doing this from memory, so please accept there may
be typos)

Let's say you want to use the 7.3 lilo as the boot lilo, you would have
entries a bit like this
boot=/dev/hda4          < where 7.3 resides
kernel=/boot/vmlinuz    < where 7.3 kernel resides

boot=/dev/hda9          < where 9 resides
kernel=/mnt/RH9/boot/vmlinuz    < where RH 9 kernel resides when you mount
the RH9 root (/dev/hda9 under the 7.3 filesystem at /mnt/RH9) Be aware that
the filesystems may not be compatible ext3/Reiserfs releases etc and 7.3
may not have support for them.

However there is an even easier way. See below.

>Anne told me that she had given up on booting into RH on her computer
>for the same reason; she had has conflicts via lilo, with having two
>different versions of Linux (she has Debian  and RH), in a multiple boot
>situation.

She just gave up too easily ;)

>I have RH 9 booting on my second physical hard drive, and RH 7.3 booting
>on my first physical hard drive.

>In the lilo.conf file, we tried including a line "boot=xxx" in the
>paragraph of the RH9 component, but it did not make any difference.

>Is it possible to have different versions of Linux, in a muliple boot
>system, using lilo, so that the intervention of booting from a floppy
boot disk is not needed?

Very possible. My machines are triple boot Win98/Mdk 9.1/SuSE 8.2. What I
do is the following:
1)Install Win98
2)Install my "Master Linux" - the one that writes the lilo image to the
MBR.
3)Install "Secondary Linuxen" - but only write the lilo/grub images to the
partition.

You now have a disk with a lilo image in the MBR that will boot between
Win98 and the "Master Linux", AND you have subsidiary linuxen with lilo
images in their own partitions.

Now you edit the /etc/lilo.conf in the master linux and you copy the Win98
stanza once for each subsidiary linux. Just change the name and the
/dev/hda1 tp /dev/hdax for each separate subsidiary. /sbin/lilo, and
reboot. You should see all your subsidiary linuxes in the menu as well as
W98 and your master Linux. Choose one of them and boot it.

The way this works is that Windows always has the command loader (if that's
the right word) at the start of the partition, and we are forcing the
subsidiary lilo's to put lilo code at the start of their own partitions.
The Master lilo will pass control to the "bootloader" in the subsidiary
partitions and wil effectively pass control from one lilo to another, until
one boots the kernel you want from the partition you want.

One of the advantages of this is that if you compile a new kernel in one of
the subsidiary linuxes, you just adjust its /etc/lilo.conf file and run its
/sbin/lilo, and you don't have to make any adjustments in the "Master
lilo".

Sorry - very longwinded - I love to hear myself talk  ;)

>2. Updating RH9 and package management

No idea, sorry

RichardM

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