Multiple Distros

[Haggis Veteran]

ok guys i need your help

I have a 128Gb SSD as my boot drive on which Fedora 18 is installed

I am adding a second drive a 500gb HDD to the system

I am going to partition this so i can use 300gb of this for backup and storage

The other 190odd ish i am going to partition into 20gb partiton and install multiple Linux distros on them so i can use them to test my scripts i am writing

Cant do this in a VM as only got 4gb ram and it runs like **** lol

so i will have say

300Gb Data

20Gb Arch Linux

20Gb Ubuntu

20Gb Manjaro

20Gb Mint

20Gb Debian

etc etc

when i do each install on the partitions will Grub on fedora Drive pick up each install and have a line for them or do i have to do something fancy to make them all work?

[+longgonebn Subscriber²]

I have never installed more then one Linux Distro, but if it's even a bit similar, I know in the past my Ubuntu Grub would over take my Windows boot manager every time.

[Karl L.]

Fedora will probably automatically add the others to your grub.cfg if you run sudo update-grub after you boot back into Fedora. Just make sure you opt out of writing the bootloader to the MBR when you install the other distributions! I'm not entirely sure if update-grub is Debian-specific, but if Fedora has it, it might also have the /etc/grub.d/40_custom file which you can use to manually add any distros that are not autodetected by update-grub.

[tim_s]

What are you looking to do with these installations?

4 GB is not a lot by Windows standards but for Linux I find the operating system a lot more flexible in this area.

2 GB for host / VM server

1 GB for client

1 GB for heavy operations

20 GB is also a lot for a machine that is not looking to install anything along side it.

[n_K]

Why not just get the ISOs for these distributions and run them from the ISO via GRUB2? Means you don't need 20 odd partitions

[tim_s]

Why not just get the ISOs for these distributions and run them from the ISO via GRUB2? Means you don't need 20 odd partitions

To some extent Haggis will still need to setup a "writeable" partition - can be on the same mount location for them all.

[Haggis Veteran]

I will give VM a try first but for example Fedora 18 runs like **** in a VM lol

and also i want to try and install arch outwith a VM so i can try get past my networking block lol

[win2k3man]

Why would you bother most of those distros and are all debian based lol

[Detection]

I will give VM a try first but for example Fedora 18 runs like **** in a VM lol

and also i want to try and install arch outwith a VM so i can try get past my networking block lol

This guy managed 145 distros on one machine, maybe you can find some pointers here :p

http://forums.justli...systems-in-a-PC

[medhunter]

No Mageia !!!.I am surprised, it is getting alot of popularity in the past few months, with a big release perhaps, in April

[tim_s]

I will give VM a try first but for example Fedora 18 runs like **** in a VM lol

and also i want to try and install arch outwith a VM so i can try get past my networking block lol

1: What virtualization software are you using?

2: What is your computers spec?

3: What is the usage scenario?

Let us start there.

[Colin McGregor]

ok guys i need your help

I have a 128Gb SSD as my boot drive on which Fedora 18 is installed

I am adding a second drive a 500gb HDD to the system

I am going to partition this so i can use 300gb of this for backup and storage

The other 190odd ish i am going to partition into 20gb partiton and install multiple Linux distros on them so i can use them to test my scripts i am writing

Cant do this in a VM as only got 4gb ram and it runs like **** lol

so i will have say

300Gb Data

20Gb Arch Linux

20Gb Ubuntu

20Gb Manjaro

20Gb Mint

20Gb Debian

etc etc

when i do each install on the partitions will Grub on fedora Drive pick up each install and have a line for them or do i have to do something fancy to make them all work?

why not do different types of distros. Debian, mint, Ubuntu and manjaro are basically the same thing. Why not 1 partition for Ubuntu, and 1 for Gentoo. Then when you boot into a different drive it will actually feel like your jumping into something different.

[Haggis Veteran]

1: What virtualization software are you using?

2: What is your computers spec?

3: What is the usage scenario?

Let us start there.

1: What virtualization software are you using?

Oracle Virtual Box

2: What is your computers spec?

Intel T1600 Dual Core,

4GB RAM,

128gb SSD

160 GB Hard Drive,

3: What is the usage scenario?

I will jsut be using them to boot into to test different window managers, de's and setups for testing my system script

[guitmz]

you'll need to manually update grub to genereate anote cfg file which will detect all the distros... in other hand, you can reinstall grub at your last distro installation, which will detect all the previous :)

[tim_s]

why not do different types of distros. Debian, mint, Ubuntu and manjaro are basically the same thing. Why not 1 partition for Ubuntu, and 1 for Gentoo. Then when you boot into a different drive it will actually feel like your jumping into something different.

Gentoo, I am not sure this is the overall goal. From the list I assume that Haggis is trying to use popular distros and I am sure Haggis will clarify this. Not only is Gentoo is far from the top on the popularity list but also might become a burden if we are stuck with making virtualization function on the easier installations.

[tim_s]

1: What virtualization software are you using?

Oracle Virtual Box

Do you need the integration of Virtual Box?

IF you had to compile optimization tools within the client - would you be comfortable with this?

2: What is your computers spec?

Intel T1600 Dual Core,

4GB RAM,

128gb SSD

160 GB Hard Drive,

Everything is "fine" for the task outside of the processor but it is still possible.

3: What is the usage scenario?

I will jsut be using them to boot into to test different window managers, de's and setups for testing my system script

To me, the performance is really in the host - I am sure you can wait for your script to run in a client, how much over-head does your script have? One thing I have noticed from watching conversations is people complaining that errors are shown and the script does not continue executing, where your response is to comment out blocks of code etc. IF you are going to try and make a "1 Script runs on all" style application than I would add an error handler and use clauses to,

A: Help debug

B: Allow the user to debug the script themselves

"tinkering" is apart of Linux once you leave the realms of Fedora / Ubuntu because the setup starts to become more about personal preference.

[Haggis Veteran]

yeah the script started off as a Fedora only script with the intention of helping me learn command line commands etc

so will always be a work in progress lol

[tim_s]

yeah the script started off as a Fedora only script with the intention of helping me learn command line commands etc

so will always be a work in progress lol

That is awesome - This is how you learn.

[Haggis Veteran]

That is awesome - This is how you learn.

hey i was playing about with Gentoo tonight

i been working through the guide you can see in the background and i download the stage3 iso

what i try to extract i get an error

I have downloaded from 5 different mirrors over the world and still get the same

any ideas?

[n_K]

Might be a corrupt stage3 they've put out. Do as it says to check the integrity or if that fails, go to the FTP directory with the old stage3's and download one of them.

[Colin McGregor]

Try one of the Canadian mirrors. I used it to get stage3 and it unpacked.

[tim_s]

Are you extracting the stage 3 to the mount point /mnt/gentoo ? It is possible the download had an issue but yet I think it is more of a permissions error. - does the handbook provide an MD5 to compare with?

Can you type

# echo $PWD;

and send this to me?

[Colin McGregor]

try http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=4

I find the quickguide messes people up cause it doesn't explain what its doing in case something does go wrong.

[Haggis Veteran]

I kept trying mirrors till i got one that worked lol

i stopped just after that and went to be

my next step is

emerge-webrsync
[/CODE]

[Haggis Veteran]

hit another wall lol

got through the entire guide and when i boot it says File not Found

so i am thinking its just my grub config not set correctly so thats my mission today