chain loading

[kimthejeng]

hi i have plop set up on my machine, there are two primary partitions occupied by xp and widows 7 then a  swap and then an extended, the extended has about six partitions inside it with slack in two of those and fedora in the rest now plop cant see the individual oses inside the extended partition, how would i set up some chain loading scenario  thing to be able to choose between  two Linuxes in the extended?

[Elmar]

hi,
difficult question. the plop boot manager cannot boot an os from an extendet partition. if i use more than 4 os on one harddisk, i use profiles to swap the entries because for my needs not every system must have access to all other partitions. i dont know how it is with your system.

one possible solution for you would be to move the swap partition to the extended. create a small primary partition that became /boot for your both linux systems. you place the kernels and initrd there and install grub or lilo there.

your system would look like this:
primary partitions: win xp, win 7, /boot, extended
extended partitions: slack, fedora, swap, ...

regards
elmar

[kimthejeng]

thanks for the reply,your suggestion is ok i dont really need any other systems having access to other partitions, now to be more specific how would i place both kernels and initrd in the /boot partition and how large would it have to be , i like the suggestion and would actually like to try it.

[Elmar]

a linux kernel and the initrd have only a few mb, so a partition size of 40 mb is much more than enough. but i have to say, if you dont have much linux experience and never have done something like that then don't do it. if you do it wrong, you have to boot with a rescue linux and repair it.

[kimthejeng]

thanks for the warning but im willing to take the risk nontheless , how do i have one boot partition for both distros as you suggested?

[Elmar]

first try it on your own and if you don't get forward i will help you. the learning factor will be bigger.

hint: if you dont use any special plop boot manager features, then you should use the linux boot manager grub.  i don't know, but i am sure, if you install fedora, then it will detect all other operating systems and prepare the grub menu that you can boot all other systems. its also possible to let create a /boot partition by the fedora installer.

[kimthejeng]

ok give me some clues plis, would the work of placing both kernels and initrd be a manual thing, i mean have one installer place thing in the /boot then have the other place them somewhere else then i cp them to the /boot partition? or a lot less of a hassle some automated way.

[Elmar]

you have to copy it by your self. nothing automated

the steps are:
create a primary partition 40mb
format it as ext3
copy the kernel and initrd files to the partition
copy the /boot/grub directory to the /boot partition
edit the menu.lst file
install grub to the /boot partition

you should read some docs about grub

[kimthejeng]

thanks i thought of a simpler way to do it, i removed the swap outside the extended and created a /boot partition as you suggested then created an extended partition which holds all the rest of the partitions, i installed slack in the first two partitions inside the extended letting it install its boot stuff in its / directory , then i installed suse in the last two partitions, also letting it install its boot stuff inside its / directory, now i then installed fedora in the middle two inside the extended and then asked it to install its boot stuff on the primary partition outside the extended, unfortunately the boot manager installation for some reason was messed up an it did not work so i used the suse dvd to rescue and installed grub in the primary boot partition outside the extended and added slack and fedora to its menu.lst , then using plop i selected that primary partition to be one of the items an booted it and boom, suse's grub comes up and i have all the options there, i tried all and suse boots to command line and im able to log in as root , but on starting x, it says fatal serve error no screens found, so does slack , unfortunately fedora on the other hand does not boot says something about file not found , is the refusal of fedora booting because i overwrote its /boot while rescuing with suse? i added its entry to suse' grub and pointed it to root (hd0,7) and kernel to /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda8
whats up? a little help.

[Elmar]

hi, i assume the problem is the fstab of the 3 linux versions. they are mounting because of the partition labels. you have to change the fstab to the device nodes. you can post a fstab and i tell you what must be changed. post the menu.lst. i will take a look at it too.

[kimthejeng]

so i mounted the fedora / directory and looked into the /boot directory and it was empty! go figure. seems the kernell an all the stuff normally there was installed in the primary partition out side the extended, where i would believe it was overwritten. i think i can try to replace them with this promising how to
http://gofedora.com/how-to-install-fedora-without-cd-dvd/

but here are the stuff you requested

the fstab for fedora


#
# /etc/fstab
# Created by anaconda on Mon Nov 30 23:22:18 2009
#
# Accessible filesystems, by reference, are maintained under '/dev/disk'
# See man pages fstab(5), findfs(, mount( and/or blkid( for more info
#
UUID=1f986001-cc0b-434d-a1b3-9dbc3baaa720 /                       ext2    defaults        1 1
UUID=4a3174ce-8b4b-4bda-9d71-aa0c00fe1c8f /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
UUID=0dc6febc-9a72-4e14-a45c-82b83db0e903 /home                   ext2    defaults        1 2
UUID=4e240c84-4d17-491e-a9d2-dff8810a7965 swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
tmpfs                   /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
devpts                  /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
sysfs                   /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
proc                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0

fstab for slackware
/dev/sda5        swap             swap        defaults         0   0
/dev/sda6        /                ext4        defaults         1   1
/dev/sda7        /home            ext4        defaults         1   2
#/dev/cdrom      /mnt/cdrom       auto        noauto,owner,ro  0   0
/dev/fd0         /mnt/floppy      auto        noauto,owner     0   0
devpts           /dev/pts         devpts      gid=5,mode=620   0   0
proc             /proc            proc        defaults         0   0
tmpfs            /dev/shm         tmpfs       defaults         0   0


and finally fstab for suse
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_HD502HI_S1VZJ1KS501197-part5 swap                 swap       defaults              0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_HD502HI_S1VZJ1KS501197-part10 /                    ext3       acl,user_xattr        1 1
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_HD502HI_S1VZJ1KS501197-part11 /home                ext3       acl,user_xattr        1 2
proc                 /proc                proc       defaults              0 0
sysfs                /sys                 sysfs      noauto                0 0
debugfs              /sys/kernel/debug    debugfs    noauto                0 0
usbfs                /proc/bus/usb        usbfs      noauto                0 0
devpts               /dev/pts             devpts     mode=0620,gid=5       0 0

and a bonus the fdisk list
Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x90909090

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *       15299       15311      104422+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2           15312       60801   365398425    5  Extended
/dev/sda3           15299       15311      104422+  83  Linux
/dev/sda4           15312       60801   365398425    5  Extended
/dev/sda5           15312       15821     4096543+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6           15822       20920    40957686   83  Linux
/dev/sda7           20921       33668   102398278+  83  Linux
/dev/sda8           33669       38767    40957686   83  Linux
/dev/sda9           38768       51515   102398278+  83  Linux
/dev/sda10          51516       55339    30716248+  83  Linux
/dev/sda11          55340       60801    43873483+  83  Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdb: 8032 MB, 8032092160 bytes
51 heads, 50 sectors/track, 6152 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2550 * 512 = 1305600 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               4        6153     7839808    b  W95 FAT32



well thats a long story , bu looking carefully at that fdisk output it seems mistaken, first sda2 is a 60gb windows 7 thing, the sda3 the primary partition that has the /boot and then sda4 extended then sda5 a swap partition an the rest is accurate,
so sda6 is / for slack and sda7 /home for the same
sda8 is / for fedora  sda9 /home ,
sda10 / for suse and sda11 /home for it.

[kimthejeng]

the sdb1 at the end of the fdisk output is my usb flash anyhow

[kimthejeng]

so i forgot menu.lst

# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Tue Dec  1 03:00:18 EAT 2009
# THIS FILE WILL BE PARTIALLY OVERWRITTEN by perl-Bootloader
# Configure custom boot parameters for updated kernels in /etc/sysconfig/bootloader

default 0
timeout 8
##YaST - generic_mbr
gfxmenu (hd0,9)/boot/message
##YaST - activate

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title SUSE LINUX
    root (hd0,9)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_HD502HI_S1VZJ1KS501197-part10 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_HD502HI_S1VZJ1KS501197-part5 splash=silent quiet showopts
    initrd /boot/initrd

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- SUSE LINUX
    root (hd0,2)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_HD502HI_S1VZJ1KS501197-part10 showopts apm=off noresume edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 x11failsafe
    initrd /boot/initrd

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: other###
title slack


    root (hd0,5)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda6
    boot

##Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: other###
title fed 12
    root (hd0,7)
    kernel  /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda8
    boot

[Elmar]

i am really confused about the fdisk output. i am wondering that you can boot anything.

i would say, restart with clean harddisk. and use only one partition for each linux.

[kimthejeng]

thanks for the help. i did finally format all and started afresh, the partitions as i had wanted to set them up (as many as they were) installed windows, then slack then fedora then suse which is the only linux i let install a boot loader and i let it install it in a primary partition thats booted by plop then it presents the choices for the linuxes.
now i need help with setting up x in slack!

[Elmar]

attach the file /var/log/Xorg.0.log from slack

[kimthejeng]

thanks, i did get x working , but using vesa, sorry for the delay in responding
i think there are other issues that caused that i do not know how to fix them, maybe the intel drivers are flustered
anyhow , the xorg.0.log said something about "screens found but none have usable configuration , no screens found" and could not start.
ill work with vesa for now , and follow acceleration later