how to install both fedora 7 and ubuntu

[kriss127]

Hello there,

I want to install both Fedora 7 and Ubuntu on my empty drive.
I tried them seperately and they work fine.
How can I install them so, when I boot, the bootloader (either from Fedora or Ubuntu)
gives me the choice to boot Fedora or Ubuntu.

thanks in advance,
Chris

[bob]

If you install Ubuntu first, be sure to 'cat /boot/grub/menu.lst' and then copy or print off the Ubuntu information so you can put it into your Fedora's /boot/grub/grub.conf as Fedora doesn't do as good a job of recognizing and booting other distros.

If you install Fedora first, Ubuntu will insist on having grub on the mbr and will overwrite Fedora's grub. Should pick up the Fedora boot properly, but you'll have to modify Ubuntu's /boot/grub/menu.lst whenever there's a Fedora kernel change. One nice thing is that Ubuntu does automount other distros, so your Fedora info can be easily displayed and shared.

Either way: don't let Fedora install as LVM - set it to install as ext3 instead. The reason is that Ubuntu won't see Fedora's swap inside the LVM and will create a second swap partition. Just wastes space, but if you have a large drive and don't mind the loss, then LVM would be fine otherwise.

[kriss127]

Thanks for the quick reply Bob,

I will try it, and post a message when its working properly.

greetings from kriss127

[The New World]

Don't know whether this is any good.
http://sourceforge.net/search/?type_...oft&words=lubi

[joe.pelayo]

If you have enough space in the hard drive you'd probably want to have two swap partitions because having a single one can lead to problems with suspend for example. At least I read that somewhere. Besides I remember time ago when I had such setup (Fedora + Ubuntu, sharing swap), since Ubuntu was installed last Fedora did not recognize the swap partition anymore.

Joe.

[bob]

Joe, I've had dozens of distros installed over the years and where that 'hidden' swap issue came up with me was when a distro is using LVM. If every distro is set up with ext3 (just one possibility), then each one sees and uses one swap. I might be wrong though. Anyone else have some info on this?

[joe.pelayo]

Originally Posted by bob

Joe, I've had dozens of distros installed over the years and where that 'hidden' swap issue came up with me was when a distro is using LVM. If every distro is set up with ext3 (just one possibility), then each one sees and uses one swap. I might be wrong though. Anyone else have some info on this?

I might have been using LVM that time. Anyway I had problems recently with Fedora 7 x86_64 and Zenwalk (regarding swap). Fedora was installed first, then Zenwalk shared the swap partition, since then Fedora complained at start up that it could not access 'resume device' (swap).

To avoid problems I simply create more swap partitions when needed.

Thanks.
Joe.

[Dies]

Originally Posted by bob

Joe, I've had dozens of distros installed over the years and where that 'hidden' swap issue came up with me was when a distro is using LVM. If every distro is set up with ext3 (just one possibility), then each one sees and uses one swap. I might be wrong though. Anyone else have some info on this?

Yes, if it happens at all, it's because the swap gets relabeled during the install.

Using device names instead of labels will cause the swap to be mounted and used even though you get an error at boot.

Simple fix is to relabel it back to what Fedora expects. Or make a new initrd.

Another way is to not allow the new install to format swap if you're concerned about this but I haven't had this problem in forever and I multiboot and change distros more than....

[joe.pelayo]

Originally Posted by Dies

Yes, if it happens at all, it's because the swap gets relabeled during the install.

Using device names instead of labels will cause the swap to be mounted and used even though you get an error at boot.

Simple fix is to relabel it back to what Fedora expects. Or make a new initrd.

I used to reformat it with Gparted, I think that fixed it once.

Joe.