Jeigh1405241495 0 Report post Posted February 24, 2006 Yea I managed to get that working. My main concern was I had never tried botting OS's off two drives. Whenever I've had two drives in the past the second was always just for storage so I wasn't sure if there were any issues. But luckily it was straightforward for the most part Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
yordan 10 Report post Posted February 24, 2006 I had never tried botting OS's off two drives My own experience is with Mandrake, I really had no problem. I had one system disk, a data disk, and the third disk had a Windows data partition and some free space. I let the total automated install run, choosing "use the remaining free space", it created the partitions on the third disk and automatically configured Lilo for dual-boot, and everything worked fine immediately.Of course, I let the install program manage everything automatically, did not configure the boot things manually. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jeigh1405241495 0 Report post Posted February 24, 2006 Yea, it turns out the boot loaders aren't too bad to set up manually. I DID end up using the ubuntu boot loader installer as it auto scans and sets it up for everything, but that's just because I think I missed an option that was causing the gentoo boot to fail. For the most part they aren't horrible. I was just worried that having boot loaders on multiple drives could cause conflicts, but luckily they seem to have taken care of everything so no fears w00 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
yordan 10 Report post Posted February 24, 2006 I was just worried that having boot loaders on multiple drives could cause conflicts No, no real problem due to the fact that you have multiple drives.The problems mainly arise because of human beings, if you mistype the disk names ; most problems arise because if you boot on one disk the disk names are not the same than if you boot from another one, so the full path to the boot program may be completely false if you enter it manually. If it boots correctly, this means that you were smart enough and did no mistake. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
qwijibow 0 Report post Posted February 27, 2006 anouther fantastic feature of grub (and probably lilo) is chainload.the chainload command passes control to anouther boot loader, justincase you want to do somthing crazy like boot windows. root (hdX) ( or (hdX,Y) where X is a disk number, and Y is a partition number)chainloader +1 (hand over control to the boot loader on the specified disk / partition) (ohh, and use rootnoverify for partitons with file-systems that grub cant read, like NTFS windows)So even if you went completely insane, and installed a differant boot loader for each non-windows Operating system, you could still boot all those differant boot loaders from the same boot disk....head spinning..........?what im basically saying, is that GRUB (and lilo) are so very configureable, that no matter what horrible mess you make of your partiton tables, and disk layouts, grub will be able to handle it. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jeigh1405241495 0 Report post Posted February 27, 2006 That's awesome. I had seen the chainloader thing and knew that I was supposed to use it for windows booting but I wasn't really sure what it ws there for , same with noverify.Still not sure what I was originally doing wrong with setting up grub but it's working now so that's all that matters I guess heh. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
yordan 10 Report post Posted February 27, 2006 Still not sure what I was originally doing wrong with setting up grub but it's working now so that's all that matters I guess heh. For today, it's quite enough, let's be happy together and enjoy your working linux.For tomorrow, if you start installing very often, and if you see the same error arrising frequently, we should consider looking what happens. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jeigh1405241495 0 Report post Posted February 27, 2006 Yea I would if it happened again. I'm willing to bet it was a really stupid little syntax error or something. Missing a value or had an option too many or something of that nature. I say that only because the grub conf I'm using now looks exactly as I remember the one I originally tried, so whatever was different must be small but deadly. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
moonwitch1405241479 0 Report post Posted February 28, 2006 Since Jeigh went through it.... I am considering Gentoo as well, I always used Red Hat, then Fedora and Ubuntu. While I am ok in all three aforementioned, even in command line, I am terrified of the Gentoo install. It's been ages since I worked command line solely, so I forgot a LOT of important things, though there are some I still remember rm -rf */* for example (it's fun to advise someone to use that command if they persist in asking you really dumb questions for the 10th time in a row eg. HOw do I enable my network thingie? - that's a quote btw)Anyhow, this will be my set-up (I need a new HD, since my 120GB one is full to the max LOL). I intend to get a SATA drive, 250 or 300GB, whichever my money allows me to. I currently am bound to Windows still - because of school and games and Photoshop - and of course Flash. Other then that, *cringes* M$ Office (powerpoint for school, seems that OpenOffice presentations look messed up in M$ PowerPoint.)So basically, I will be dual booting (perhaps triple booting to give Vista a test drive - a friend of mine works for M$ Benelux and is willing to "lend" me his copy for my opinion because he feels it would pull me away from Linux LOL) between Gentoo and Win XP Pro. It will be done from a SATA drive, and an IDE as data storage. I have no issues writing grub onto my MBR (easy enough to fix it if it does go wrong)My main worry is not the partitioning, I tend to do that on beforehand. But the compilation of a kernel. I have never done that - to my knowledge So knowing my short history, is it doable? I've also considered Debian at one point because I like the debian background in Ubuntu. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jeigh1405241495 0 Report post Posted February 28, 2006 Moon, I'd say yes. I had never done it before and got it (mostly) right on my first try haha. There are safe route you can take, like using an app (genkernal, I believe its called) that makes a kernal for you, based on your system that it checks out. Or you can do like me and wing it on choosing your own kernal configuration options. I had gotten most everything running first try excluding my networking was a bit messed up because I rushed it but that wasn't a big issue.Also, worst case scenario? it doesn't work. Then you can just recompile the kernal and try again, no worries.Another option is I just started a thread earlier about how they released a livecd release for x86 arch's, It has a graphical guided installation for gentoo. Personally I would reccomend trying the oldschool install first. The two seem fairly similar but you might get more out of doing it the old way first. Then if that doesn't work, you always have the livecd to fire up and try out.Either way I'd reccomend it. I haven't had much time lately so I'm not totally into the Gentoo world yet, but I've enjoyed the experiences of installing it and learning a bunch of stuff on the way, so I'm glad someone else might have the courage to try since I forged on Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
moonwitch1405241479 0 Report post Posted March 2, 2006 Well, I always found Linux "nice". I had very little computer experience, and ended up running Linux for 3 or 4 years solely. Never had issues. I didn't even know what the heck partitions were when I installed Red Hat 7.1 LOL. So yeah, you do learn a lot by using Linux. Of course after being spoiled with so many configuration options in Linux and then installing windows - it's a bit a serious let-down. LOL. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
qwijibow 0 Report post Posted March 3, 2006 SWEET...a few months ago i started ranting about how fantastic gentoo is, and hw its the best thing since the invention of Absinthe, and the performance benefints to home-compiling.I managed to convert one person ( even though his over-clocked ram melted part way though the compile )And now were all going Gentoo..I started a mini-revolution :PI believe i was the first person to add the Registed Linux user badge to my sig....Maybe next i will start seeing "powered by gentoo" bages poping up Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jeigh1405241495 0 Report post Posted March 3, 2006 Haha, well officially my interest in Gentoo was sparked by my older brother back in the day... but its the thought that counts lol. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
moonwitch1405241479 0 Report post Posted March 4, 2006 Once I get my new drive, I will try - just tell me Gentoo doesn't make issues out of installing on SATA drives Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
yordan 10 Report post Posted March 4, 2006 I just tried Gentoo for ppc64. The install CD just booted, and did simply not install... So, gentoo, maybe yes, but not on ppc64 ! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
