antiX-forum

You could install antiX's grub to the MBR and overwrite the pcfluxbox one and add the lines you have for pcfluxbox to the antiX-mepis grub menu.

To do that, boot antiX livecd, and open a terminal, sux to root password and type msystem.
There is an option to re-install grub.
Put it in the MBR from the antiX partition.

Also maybe before the above, try changing the /dev/hda5 to sda5

anticapitalista wrote:You could install antiX's grub to the MBR and overwrite the pcfluxbox one and add the lines you have for pcfluxbox to the antiX-mepis grub menu.

To do that, boot antiX livecd, and open a terminal, sux to root password and type msystem.
There is an option to re-install grub.
Put it in the MBR from the antiX partition.

Also maybe before the above, try changing the /dev/hda5 to sda5

1. Is "sux" a typo-- did you mean "su"? Or is it really "sux"?

2. When you say to put it "in the MBR" from the antiX partition, does that mean that when I select to re-install grub, it will give me a browser window and I browse to the AntiX partition and there will find a folder called "MBR"?

3. When you say to change the /dev/hda5 to sda5, you mean in the currently existing grub made by the Tinyflux installer, for the AntiX entry there I should try changing its location from /dev/hda5 to sda5, right?

3. Yes, but also make the other changes I showed in my earlier post.

1. Use su or sux.

2. It will give you a choice, to put in MBR.

anticapitalista wrote:Also maybe..., try changing the /dev/hda5 to sda5

Tried it. Didn't work.

anticapitalista wrote:You could install antiX's grub to the MBR and overwrite the pcfluxbox one and add the lines you have for pcfluxbox to the antiX-mepis grub menu.

To do that, boot antiX livecd, and open a terminal, sux to root password and type msystem.
There is an option to re-install grub.
Put it in the MBR from the antiX partition.

Did it. Worked beautifully.

I didn't even need to add the lines I have for Tinyflux to the AntiX-mepis grub menu. What the AntiX grub reinstaller created for the Tinyflux lines worked fine.

Thanks.

Add: When one is setting up multiple linux distros on one HD, is the last distro to be installed supposed to be able to set up a grub menu that will include all the distros on the disc? Or is it that the grub installer is not generally capable of doing this, and one should expect to have to do a reinstall of the grub menu when all the distros are installed, in order to include all the distros in the menu?

In my experience, it depends on the distro. Some distro's are able to install GRUB and find the other installs on that drive and others aren't. I find it easier to install GRUB to the MBR initially and then don't install GRUB for any distro after that. Then you just have to add the line in GRUB and you are fine. Always works for me!

I see, sounds very good. And later on then, when you've added another distro and need to it a line for it in Grub, how do you know how the line should read? Is there a standard way for listing any new distro, or does each distro have its own unique way of how it needs to be listed?

Here is a person who has grub booting 100+ OS's. It's long but clearly demonstrates the power of grub.

http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthre ... did=143973

I think it's kind of standard to an extent. If I am not sure I usually just look up a default GRUB for that distro and copy it.

eriefisher wrote:Here is a person who has grub booting 100+ OS's. It's long but clearly demonstrates the power of grub.

http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthre ... did=143973

Thank you for the link-- it is indeed a fascinating thread from which I can learn a lot. I am, however, stuck right now at a point before what he is dealing with there. He is dealing with the creation of the Grub boot menu. But I don't understand how he was able to even create so many partitions on his hard drive. Gparted only allows 4 primary partitions of which one is an extended partition. I think it may have been you who earlier suggested one could place further extended partitions inside the primary partitions-- but I have not found it to be the case. I wanted to put four distros on my disc, plus a swap. Each distro with separate partitions for root and home. But after putting the swap as hda1, then hda2 an extended partition containing two logical partitions (1 root, 1 home), I then created a third primary partition intending to place an extended partition inside it which would take up 2/3 the partition, and the other 1/3 I'd use as another primary partition. But gparted wouldn't even allow me to create that extended partition. As far as I can see, due to this limitation of four primary parititions of which one is an extended partition, the only way to get four distros on the disc would be to combine the home and root of each distro into a single partition. IIn other words, gparted only seems to allow for a maximum of five separate compartments of which one is the swap. If I am incorrect, please let me know as I've rewritten zeros to the drive and my disc is lying now half partitioned. Before moving further ahead, I'd like to confirm what the possibilities about this are.

I think I've found the answer to my question above. Haven't tried it yet--I'll try it in a moment. But here below is the explanation which provides the item which was missing from my understanding. It comes from this page: http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthre ... post861282

Most MS systems are designed to reside in a primary partition, and there can be a maximum of four primaries in each hard disk. To get more partitions, a user “must” give up one primary to turn it into an extended partition. In Linux a Pata (or IDE) disk can have 63 partitions maximum and the limit of a Sata or SCSI disk is 15.

The number of partitions plus the whole disk itself make up 64 and 16 devices respectively.

(Updated note: Since the publication of this thread Linux kernel 2.6.20 and newer have ceased to support Pata disk names and the 63 partitions limit, stated in the blue text above, is no longer supported. Please read Post #21 for further explanation)

An extended partition also consume a device name but cannot be used for storage because it is just the border defining the beginning and the finishing points of the logical partitions.

Linux can be installed and booted from either a primary or a logical partition so it pays to give the primaries to MS systems that dependent on them.

Linux always name the first logical partition as the 5th partition in any hard disk. Therefore theoretically in a Pata disk, say a hda, the maximum usage is hda1, hda2 and hda3 as the primaries, hda4 being the extended partition holding a maximum 59 logical partitions inside (from hda5 to hda63).

It is an interesting feature of this above fellow's hard drive scheme-- a fellow who has set up 145 OS's in one computer, under a single grub menu-- that he has dedicated only one partition for data. All the 145 root partitions store their personal data in one single partition. See below:

I used 2x300Gb Pata disk and 2x200 Sata Disk to set up 152 partitions. I always put one operating system in one partition. As an extended partition of each hard disk has no storage of its own, one data-only partition is needed for my personal data, another data-only partition to house the common boot loader and one Swap partition is needed for all the Linux I ended up losing 7 partitions leaving 145 partitions to house the 145 operating systems. [/code]

His hard drive map:

Here are the partition sizes I allocate to each system

(a) Dos in 1 or 2Gb (primary, type fat16 or fat32)
(b) XP and Vista in 25Gb and 20Gb (primary, type NTFS)
(c) For Win2k I used 15Gb (primary, type NTFS)
(d) For Win98 I used 5Gb (primary, type fat32)
(e) Linux 5Gb (majority) and 10Gb ( say for a few for big distros) (logical, either Ext3 or Reiserfs filing types)
(f) One swap 1 Gb common to all Linux
(g) Personal data 95Gb large fat32

Again I reiterate, all the 145 OS's share one single partition where they deposit and store their personal data. I wonder whether this means that each OS's root goes in a separate partition, and the home folder of all the OS's is in the same, single personal data folder. It is still a question in my mind, how each Linux distro recognizes which home folder is its own.

Upon further reading, it seems that in fact he has placed each distro's root and home folder together in the same partition:

In the installation of every Linux we can “instruct” the installer to place Linux in any partition we want. This is done by nominating a single partition to mount the root or “/” of the Linux. If no more than one partition is given to an installer it will place a Linux's directories of /boot, /home, /usr…..as subdirectories to "/" inside the single partition, stacking them back to back so that you only need to worry only if the accummulative content starts to excced the overall partition capacity.

Such a sophisticated boot system, surprising to see he felt to keep the home folder in the same partition as the root folder. --Something which experienced Linux users seem to avoid.

I think this is what we have been trying to explain to you. The /home directory contains only config files if you put your personal data on a separate partition. This exactly what I do.

The advantage of this is that you can reinstall or completely change OS's and not affect you personal data. /home will have all the settings that you have created and it would be very small. Being small means that it would be easy to recreate or back up if needed.

In the above example he also created a /boot partition which is not necessary but it probably help keep thing in order with so much going on.

I see, ok now I understand. So if one keeps a separate data partition, then the /home will be kept in the SAME partition as "/" because all the critical personal data is in a separate data partition which is accessed by all the different distros. That makes total sense.

Two follow-up questions here:

1. I can understand the OOwriter/Abiword files, photos, etc will all be in the data partition and commonly available to all distros. Now, what about one's mail folders for the email program? This is amongst my most important and critical data. Can that be kept in the data partition as well, and be accessed by all the distros using the same email program? Or is that going to have to be kept in one distro's home folder. Let's say for argument's sake that Thunderbird is installed on all four distros. Can my TB profile folder be kept in the data partition and accessed by all? If so, then this would mean ALL my personal data is truly located in the data partition. And the only thing in the home folder would be the config files.

2. The reason I think misunderstanding arose on my part about what is to be stored in /home, and whether /home should be in the same partition as "/", is that in Ubuntu, most senior users keep their /home and "/" in separate partitions because every six months a new version of Ubuntu is released. By keeping / and /home in separate partitions, they can easily do an upgrade or clean install of the new version, and not worry about all their personal data (i.e. email data which defaults to a hidden folder inside /home) as well as personal settings. So for example, all the bookmarks for their browser (usually Firefox) as well as any other browser settings, will be automatically present in the next Ubuntu install without their having to do anything special. And because their /home is in a separate partition, I believe many of these users just make this the location of all their general personal data such as OOo files as well.

But perhaps many of them are not running multiple Linux distros. I think the majority have a simple dual boot of WinXP/Ubuntu. Or Vista/Ubuntu. Due to this, there is more of a tendency to make the /home, which is already being kept separate (due to convenience of maintenance of personal settings during the 6-monthly version changes), into the storage location for ALL the personal data including email, word processing, video, photos, etc.

It seems to me that these may be two different scenarios:
1. Someone who wants to put multiple linux distros on a single HD to test them. More of a potentially temporary situation than a longitudinal, long-term arrangement. This lessons the need for maintenance of all one's personal configuration settings separate from the "/", because of less likelihood of having to maintain the arrangement over multiple OS versions through time.
2. Someone who has only one Linux distro on the HD and wants to keep it for years. There they will be wanting the convenience of maintained configuration settings across distro versions.

1.I think in thunderbird you can select where to put the folders and just point the other OS's to it. Most email clients will do this.

2.Most people will set up a separate for this reason, especially Ubuntu because you have to reinstall all the time(ridiculous). For that sort of thing you should back up anyway ie:bookmarks, certain set up files and so on. Most of the config files are useless unless you are going to install the same OS. Even then the new version may not be exactly the same so a new file will have to be created. If you use the same /home for each distro and say two of them are running kde it is possible that both OS's will use the same config files but what if there are two different version installed. The config files may not be the same so you would need two sets. This is where the confusion starts and why I keep everything separate.

I see. So you would view the following as unnecessary then:

Four separate root partitions (one for each distro), and four separate /home partitions (one for each distro). That gives a total of eight partitions i.e. "/" #1, /home #1, "/" #2, /home #2, "/" #3, /home #3, "/" #4, /home #4. Plus one swap and one for data for a total of 10 partitions. The data partition would house personal data to be commonly accessed by all the distros.

Rather, you would suggest collapsing each distro's "/" and "/home" into one partition, thus making the setup simpler. And the home folder could be backed up easily if desired as it will be quite small. Plus, as you point out, many of the config files would be useless upon upgrade to a new version because those config files may be updated.

JawsThemeSwimming428 wrote:I think it's kind of standard to an extent. If I am not sure I usually just look up a default GRUB for that distro and copy it.

I see. I'm sure that yes, it must be standard. But when you say you just "look up a default GRUB for that distro and copy it", where do you look that up? On another computer on which you have it installed? And if you don't have it installed on another computer, then where?

Add: I think I understand now. Someone told me on another forum that once all the distros are installed, I can use the working distro's grub to boot to that one and from there browse into the other distros' menu.1st file and copy the three boot lines from there into the grub install which I'm going to use. Is that the idea?