Triple boot Fedora,

[rajatnws]

Hi,
I want to of install 3 instances of fedora on my Dell server. At any point I would like to boot one of these. Can any one point me to the some documentation

Regards
Raj

[SlowJet]

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/install-guide/f8/en_US/

It's just a matter of creating partitions for each install, and 1st get a regular grub , the next ones get install grub boot sector on the sdan of the /boot for that install.

It can all be done from the installer, anaconda, using the custom partitioning drop down, and disk druid.
Just read the screens very carefully.
Multiple booting hasn't changed much in a decade.
For best results create a /boot, /, /home, swap for each system.

One system per install, repeat 3 times.
SJ

[bob]

You can do this fairly easily. Instead of LVM, set up each of the partitions as ext3 and the fourth partition on your drive as 'swap' (roughly twice the size of your ram, but not more than a gig or two at most).

During the installs, I'd set up grub to be on the mbr, as usual for the first Fedora install. The second and third installs, I'd put their grubs on their root partitions instead of overwriting the first grub. Then, modify the first grub.conf to add the new Fedoras like this:

title Fedora 2
root (hd0,1) <adjust for your partitioning scheme
rootnoverify (hd0,1) < same thing
chainloader +1

So, once set up, you'll boot the first Fedora normally. The second and third Fedoras, you'll pass the boot from Fedora1's bootloader to Fedora2's or Fedora3's. The nice thing with that scheme is that each version of Fedora will automatically change their grub.conf when kernels change. No need to modify anything.

[bob]

SJ, you beat me! With ext3, only one swap is needed, as each Fedora will see and use it.

[SlowJet]

The installer miss-uses swapon -s
rather tand swapon /dev/xxx for the swap it just created.

The fstab for the 1st will only have 1 swap, the second will have 2, and the third will have 3 swaps in the fstab.
Editing the fstab just before re=boot at the end of the install with C-A-F2
can set the fstab to see only its swap.

An error in practice does not make it the law.

SJ

[SlowJet]

filed Bugzilla Bug 441948

Pease,

SJ