How to install, boot multiple Linuxes with Windows?

[dk60902]

I currently am multiple booting my computer with Win XP and Puppy (frugal install). Here are my partitions: sda1 NTFS (WinXP), sda2 ext2 (Puppy 5.20, 5.25, 5.28), sda3 swap, sda4 FAT. I used the Grub Bootloader Config off Puppy.

Now suppose I want to install Linux Mint or other other Linux Distro on another partition. Yes, I realize that I'll have to create another, 5th, partition on which to install the distro. For the sake of argument, it'll be sda5.

Please tell me how to go about installing the distro and what to edit on my menu.lst

I cut and pasted below the relevant lines on my menu.lst.

title Puppy Linux 520 frugal in sda2 dir puppy520
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
kernel /puppy520/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd psubdir=puppy520
initrd /puppy520/initrd.gz

title Puppy Linux 525 frugal in sda2 dir puppy525
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
kernel /puppy525/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd psubdir=puppy525
initrd /puppy525/initrd.gz

title Puppy Linux 528 frugal in sda2 dir puppy528
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
kernel /puppy528/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd psubdir=puppy528
initrd /puppy528/initrd.gz

# Start GRUB global section
#timeout 30
color light-gray/blue black/light-gray
# End GRUB global section
# Other bootable partition config begins
title Windows (on /dev/sda1)
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
# Other bootable partition config ends
# Linux bootable partition config begins
title Linux (on /dev/sda2)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda2 ro vga=normal
# Linux bootable partition config ends
# Other bootable partition config begins
title Windows (on /dev/sda4)
map (hd0,0) (hd0,3)
map (hd0,3) (hd0,0)
rootnoverify (hd0,3)
makeactive
chainloader +1

If it's relevant info, the computer I'm using is a Dell Dimension 8800 with 2.4 GHz, 512 mb, 40 gb HD.

Thank you for any help.

[Karl Godt]

menu.lst site:http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/

[dk60902]

Thanks, but the link you simply does a google search.

[bigpup]

When installing Mint or what ever. Do not let them install a boot loader.
After install.
Boot Puppy 528.
menu->System->
Rerun Grub Bootloader Config.
It should find the new Linux installs and make proper entries to boot them.
I seem to have better luck using the
Grub4dos Bootloader config.
( Do not get hung up by the name. It is an improved version of Grub)

[maik.murks]

I currently am multiple booting my computer with Win XP and Puppy (frugal install). Here are my partitions: sda1 NTFS (WinXP), sda2 ext2 (Puppy 5.20, 5.25, 5.28), sda3 swap, sda4 FAT. I used the Grub Bootloader Config off Puppy.

Now suppose I want to install Linux Mint or other other Linux Distro on another partition. Yes, I realize that I'll have to create another, 5th, partition on which to install the distro. For the sake of argument, it'll be sda5.

Please tell me how to go about installing the distro and what to edit on my menu.lst

I cut and pasted below the relevant lines on my menu.lst.

title Puppy Linux 520 frugal in sda2 dir puppy520
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
kernel /puppy520/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd psubdir=puppy520
initrd /puppy520/initrd.gz

title Puppy Linux 525 frugal in sda2 dir puppy525
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
kernel /puppy525/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd psubdir=puppy525
initrd /puppy525/initrd.gz

title Puppy Linux 528 frugal in sda2 dir puppy528
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
kernel /puppy528/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd psubdir=puppy528
initrd /puppy528/initrd.gz

# Start GRUB global section
#timeout 30
color light-gray/blue black/light-gray
# End GRUB global section
# Other bootable partition config begins
title Windows (on /dev/sda1)
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
# Other bootable partition config ends
# Linux bootable partition config begins
title Linux (on /dev/sda2)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda2 ro vga=normal
# Linux bootable partition config ends
# Other bootable partition config begins
title Windows (on /dev/sda4)
map (hd0,0) (hd0,3)
map (hd0,3) (hd0,0)
rootnoverify (hd0,3)
makeactive
chainloader +1

If it's relevant info, the computer I'm using is a Dell Dimension 8800 with 2.4 GHz, 512 mb, 40 gb HD.

Thank you for any help.

Hi dk60902.

It seems to be that you have some serious problems - and from my point of view there are two different ways to solve most of your problems.

First of all your menu.lst is simply wrong. If you like to take part of the advantages of GRUB then your menu.lst have to start with the GRUB global section. And after the GRUB global section comes to an end, your different entries for booting an operating system should appear in the menu.lst - not the other way round - not mixed - never ever. So it seems to be that one of your problems is obviously, that your knowledge about GRUB is near to nothing. And because of that, please be so kind and post your whole menu.lst, not only, as you‘ve written, the relavant parts - as I don‘t think that you really know which parts of the menu.lst are relevant and which parts are not. Moreover please be so kind and post some informations about your partitions how big they are.

I assume, you‘ve installed GRUB to your second primary partition sda2.

Your next problem is that you have already four primary partitions defined on your harddisk, named sda1, sda2, sda3 and sda4 - and unfortunately there is no space left in the partition table of your harddisk for another partition.

So, if you like to have more partitions on your harddisk, there is some magic needed. This magic comes in form of a kind of let‘s say special envelope, which is able to cover some more partitions. This special kind of envelope is called ‚extended partition‘. An extended partition is able to cover several more partitions, namely sda5, sda6, sda7... up to sda15 - as far as I know.

But...

The partition table of your harddisk is only able to cover not more than one extended partition.

And...

The entry for the extended partition in the partition table is one of the maximum of four possible entries for primary partitions.

This means...

If you want to have more than four partitions onto your harddisk, you have only a maximum space for three primary partitions - the fourth, fifth and all the other partitions you like to have would reside inside the extended partition.

So, coming to the first of the two ways. I think this way is the better one - but it‘s the more difficult one, too. So be very careful - and it would be really better if you know what you are doing, if you take this way - because you have a good chance to kill your system.

And here we go for an example of the first way. I assume in this example, that the partitions sda3 and sda4 are directly behind/before each other and that there is nothing between these two partitions. Moreover I assume that the FAT-partition has some gigs space left for later use of installing another operating system - and I assume that the swap-partition has the right size.

Step 1.1: Make a backup of your FAT partition sda4 - on an USB-disk for example.
Step 1.2: Boot your pc with one of your puppy-CDs - you should use 'pfix=ram‘.
Step 1.3: Start GParted - you‘ll find it in the system menu.
Step 1.4: Right-click on swap-partition sda3 and switch swapping off - and apply changes.
Step 1.5: Right-click on FAT-partition sda4 and delete it - and apply changes.
Step 1.6: Write down the size of the swap-partition sda3.
Step 1.7: Right-click on swap-partition sda3 and delete it - and apply changes.
Step 1.8: Quit GParted - and reboot you pc as described in step 1.2.
Step 1.9: After rebooting Puppy start GParted again.
Step 1.10: You should see 1 big area of unallocated space as a result of the deleting of the former partitions sda3 and sda4.
Step 1.11: Right-click on the unallocated area and select ‚new‘.
Step 1.12: Select ‚extended partition‘ on the right side of the upcoming menu - and take care of that the whole available space will be used for the new extended partition.
Step 1.13: Apply changes.
Step 1.14: Right-click into the unallocated space within the new generated extended partition, hopefully sda3 - and select 'new‘.
Step 1.15: Define a swap-partition size according to step 1.6 - with ‚linux-swap‘ as partition type.
Step 1.16: Apply changes.
Step 1.17: Right-click into the unallocated space within the new generated extended partition - and select 'new‘.
Step 1.18: Define a FAT-partition smaller than the original one but at least big enough to cover all the data you‘ve backed up in step 1.1.
Step 1.19: Apply changes.
Step 1.20: Right-click into the unallocated space within the new generated extended partition - and select 'new‘.
Step 1.21: Define an ext3 or ext4 partition from the rest of the available space - but 7 or 8 gigs for LinuxMint should be enough.
Step 1.22: Apply changes.
Step 1.23: Quit GParted - and reboot you pc as described in step 1.2.
Step 1.24: After rebooting Puppy start GParted again - and take a look to what you‘ve done so far.
Step 1.25: You should see the new extended partition sda3, your new swap-partition sda5, your new and until now empty FAT-partition sda6 and last but not least an empty ext3 or ext4 partition sda7 prepared for your installation of LinuxMint. Of course you should see your old NTFS-partition sda1 and your old ext2-partition, too.
Step 1.26: If you see all the partitions described in step 1.25, you‘ve done everything well, until now - congratulations.
Step 1.27: Quit GParted.
Step 1.28: Restore the data you‘ve backed up in step 1.1 into sda6, your new FAT-partition - copy back with ROX-filer should be ok.
Step 1.29: Start edit your before corrected menu.lst for preparation of the LinuxMint installation.
Step 1.30: Make a new boot entry in your menu.lst consisting of three new lines, according to and similar to your other boot entries.
Step 1.31: Line1: „title LinuxMint in sda7".
Step 1.32: Line2: „root (hd0,6)“.
Step 1.33: Line3: „chainloader +1“.
Step 1.35: Save your menu.lst.

Now you can start installing your LinuxMint to sda7.

But...

You must take care of the installation of the bootmanager, that LinuxMint will install. It is necessary to edit the kind of installation. The default installation of the LinuxMint GRUB goes to sda, this is the MBR, the booting area of your whole harddisk - and this is definitely wrong for your case, because there is your old GRUB living already. So, you have to change it from sda to sda7, which means to the booting area of your partition sda7. And because of this is essential to select no standard-installation and no beside-installation - you must select the manual installation or the other-installation. Only in this type of installation you get the chance to select your partition where LinuxMint should belong to. And by the way, you should LinuxMint let reformat your prepared partition sda7 to ext3 or ext4 and you should select the LinuxMint use as „/“ not „root“.

Good luck.

Once LinuxMint has finished its installation and your pc boots without the LinuxMint-CD, you can try out LinuxMint by selecting your prepared item in your menu.lst. If everything went well - LinuxMint should come up - just for your pleasure. So, enjoy it.

Congratulations.

Coming to the second of the two ways. This one is not so good as the first one because in the end you are not so flexible as with the first one - but this way should be definitely good enough. Moreover this second way gives you another option - you can use this second way as an add-on to the first one.

And here we go for an example of the second way. This time I assume, that your ext2-partition sda2 is big enough to cover a complete LinuxMint installation, that your NTFS-partition has enough space left to cover all your Puppy installations - and I assume that the swap-partition has the right size. Moreover I assume that each savefile of your Puppies resides in the corresponding main directory of each Puppy, so that all files a Puppy needs could be found in the main directory of exact this Puppy.

Step 2.1: Boot your pc with one of your puppy-CDs - you should use 'pfix=ram‘.
Step 2.2: Mount your NTFS-partition sda1 and mount your ext2-partition with your frugal Puppy installations sda2.
Step 2.3: Copy the three main directories of and with your three Puppies to your NTFS-partition - not into a sub-directory - straight into the root of sda1.
Step 2.4: Rename the three main directories of your Puppies on sda2 - for example extend the directory names with a postfix or prefix named ‚old‘.
Step 2.5: Go to the directory /boot/grub of sda2 and copy your corrected before menu.lst to menu.lst.old.
Step 2.6: Edit your menu.lst and replace sda2 with sda1 and (hd0,1) with (hd0,0) - within your three boot entries of your three Puppies.
Step 2.7: Reboot your pc without CD with your first Puppy, then with your second Puppy and finally with your third Puppy.
Step 2.8: All your three Puppies should boot properly - if so, well done, until now, go to step 2.9 - if not, you made a mistake, roll back and start again with step 2.1.
Step 2.9: Find your edited menu.lst on sda2 and copy it to the root of your NTFS-partition sda1.
Step 2.10: Find and download the last version archive of GRUB4DOS - I think the last version is 0.44.
Step 2.11: Extract the GRUB4DOS archive to a directory of your choice.
Step 2.12: You need only three important files from the archive: gldr.mbr, gldr and bootlace.com - but there is another fourth file, which is good to have: grub.exe.
Step 2.13: Copy at least the three improtant files to the root of your NTFS-partition sda1 - but it would be better to copy all of the four files to the root of sda1.
Step 2.14: Open with the help of ROX-filer a terminal within the root of your NTFS-partition sda1.
Step 2.15: Type into the just opened terminal „pwd“ - without quotation marks of course.
Step 2.16: You should get the answer: „/mnt/sda1“ - if so, you‘re right.
Step 2.17: Type into the terminal „ls“ - without quotation marks.
Step 2.18: Within the answer you get, you should see all of the following files: bootlace.com, gldr, gldr.mbr, grub.exe - if so, you‘re right - otherwise you‘re wrong.
Step 2.19: And now it‘ll get a little bit dangerous - so, be careful with the next step.
Step 2.20: Type the following exactly into the terminal „./bootlace.com /dev/sda“ - without quotation marks.
Step 2.21: If the comand from step 2.20 was finished successfully, then you‘ve finished the installation of GRUB4DOS into the MBR of your harddisk successfully - let‘s see if it was well done.
Step 2.22: Unmount the still mounted partitions sda1 and sda2.
Step 2.23: Start GParted - you‘ll find it in the system menu.
Step 2.24: Right-click to the partition of sda1 - and select „manage flags" or something similar.
Step 2.25: Set the „boot-flag“ - and finally apply changes.
Step 2.26: Quit GParted
Step 2.27: Reboot your pc without CD - you should see you old boot entries in a menu - but this time the menu comes from GRUB4DOS and not from your old GRUB.
Step 2.28: Test every operating system you have on your harddisk, if every system boots up properly - if so, well done - if not, there was something going wrong with these things you‘ done.

Unfortunately we can‘t prepare the menu.lst before installing LinuxMint as we‘ve done it within the first way, because we don‘t know right now at the moment, what kind of ideas LinuxMint will have for the boot entry for itself within the menu.lst. But whatever it is, since LinuxMint is thinking in GRUB2 and not in GRUB or GRUB4DOS, we have to translate this part of GRUB2 syntax into the older syntax of GRUB respectively GRUB4DOS which both have quite the same syntax. Because of that, we have to stop here with part 1 of the second way.

So, congratulations - you have successfully reached the end of part 1 of the second way - the finally part 2 of the second way follows after your successfully installation of LinuxMint.

Now you can start installing your LinuxMint to sda2.

But...

You must take care of the installation of the bootmanager, that LinuxMint will install. It is necessary to edit the kind of installation. The default installation of the LinuxMint GRUB goes to sda, this is the MBR, the booting area of your whole harddisk - and this is definitely wrong for your case, because there is your new GRUB4DOS living already. So, you have to change it from sda to sda2, which means to the booting area of your partition sda2. And because of this is essential to select no standard-installation and no beside-installation - you must select the manual installation or the other-installation. Only in this type of installation you get the chance to select your partition where LinuxMint should belong to. And by the way, you should LinuxMint let reformat your prepared partition sda2 to ext3 or ext4 and you should select the LinuxMint use as „/“ not „root“.

Please don‘t do anything that causes LinuxMint to reboot your pc - while LinuxMint is installing - because your installation of LinuxMint won‘t boot until you‘ve finished part 2 of the second way. Normally LinuxMint only ask you only one time to reboot - and this is the moment when LinuxMint has finished its installation. So, don‘t selecet as much as you can - select only these items which were needed for this time. Once when LinuxMint is been able to boot successfully by itself - then you can selcect as much items for installing on top as you want.

But nevertheless, when LinuxMint finshed its installation and ask you for a reboot then you should do it, and take out the LinuxMint-CD when LinuxMint tells you to do so - and your pc should reboot. After rebooting you won‘t see anything about LinuxMint - but that‘s ok for now. And this would be a good moment to start over with part 2 od the second way.

Good luck.

If you reached this point of my ‚short‘ description of the second way, I assume that everything went well and you see now the items of your menu.lst of GRUB4DOS - and it‘s time now for the final part 2 of the second way.

Step 2.29: Boot one of your Puppies of your choice.
Step 2.30: Mount sda1 - start edit your menu.lst - and prepare a new boot entry with 4 lines - without the quotation marks of course.
Step 2.31: Line1: „title “ - the last character is a blank
Step 2:32: Line2: „root (hd0,1)“
Step 2:33: Line3: „kernel “ - the last character is a blank
Step 2.34: Line4: „initrd “ - the last character is a blank
Step 2.35: Mount sda2 - go to /boot/grub with ROX-filer - and open the file grub.cfg with the text editor.
Step 2.36: Find the main GRUB2-boot-entry for LinuxMint within the grub.cfg - this boot entry should begin around line 98 with the word „menuentry“ followed by some text.
Step 2.37: Copy the text between the two „‘“-characters.
Step 2.38: Paste the copied text into your prepared line1 of your menu.lst of step 2.31 after the blank.
Step 2.39: Switch again to the grub.cfg - and find the word „linux“ within the boot entry - should be 8 lines beyond the line with the word „menuentry“.
Step 2.40: Copy the text starting with a „/“ until the last readable character of this line.
Step 2.41: Paste the copied text into your prepared line3 of your menu.lst of step 2.33 after the blank.
Step 2.42: Switch again to the grub.cfg - and find the word „initrd“ within the boot entry - should be 1 line beyond the line with the word „linux“.
Step 2.43: Copy the text starting with a „/“ until the last readable character of this line.
Step 2.44: Paste the copied text into your prepared line4 of your menu.lst of step 2.34 after the blank.
Step 2.45: Save your new menu.lst and close it.
Step 2.46: Quit the grub.cfg - and don‘t save anything.
Step 2.47: Reboot your pc
Step 2.48: After your your pc comes up again, you should see a new menu entry with LinuxMint.
Step 2.49: Start LinuxMint.
Step 2.50: Enjoy it

Congratulations.

Well, I‘m just thinking of a third way. But for that way you have to reactivate your NT-bootloader within your XP again. And you need only two small files of the GRUB4DOS archive. But this is another story. And too much for now, I think. Perhaps if I have some more time.

However, hope the small description helps a little bit.

Cheers

Maik.Murks

[dk60902]

Thanks for the long, detailed response, Maik. I'm @ work, so I'll have to finish reading later.

Briefly, I have absolutely no problem booting into WinXP, or either of the 3 pups on SDA2, so I consider it a success. However, I've become interested in trying out other distros. I realize that I'll have to create some logical partitions. I think I'll have to delete sda3, and recreate as an extended or logical. I setup the dual boot months back, and in the last couple of weeks, I became interested in other distros. I wanted to try them out installed to HD, rather than from a live disc or virtualized. At the time of setup, I only setup 4 partitions because I wasn't thinking multiple boot at that time.

Yes, I'm not knowledgeable about GRUB, as I'm fairly new to Linux and am still learning. All I did was follow the instructions on puppylinux.org for a frugal install. When I decided to install 2 more pups into sda1, all I did was edit menu.lst. The grub was from the "grub bootloader config" from menu-system-grub bootloader config (with worm icon). The menu.lst was preconfigured upon installation of GRUB, and I simply added the puppy entries. It popped up on a dialog box, and I copy and pasted onto menu.lst. I'll have to disagree with you that my knowledge of GRUB is next to nothing.

Here's the entire menu.lst:

# GRUB configuration file '/boot/grub/menu.lst'.
# generated by 'grubconfig'. Thu Feb 3 13:04:36 2011
#
# The backup copy of the MBR for drive '/dev/sda' is
# here '/boot/grub/mbr.sda.3213'. You can restore it like this.
# dd if=/boot/grub/mbr.sda.3213 of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1
#
title Puppy Linux 520 frugal in sda2 dir puppy520
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
kernel /puppy520/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd psubdir=puppy520
initrd /puppy520/initrd.gz

title Puppy Linux 525 frugal in sda2 dir puppy525
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
kernel /puppy525/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd psubdir=puppy525
initrd /puppy525/initrd.gz

title Puppy Linux 528 frugal in sda2 dir puppy528
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
kernel /puppy528/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd psubdir=puppy528
initrd /puppy528/initrd.gz

# Start GRUB global section
#timeout 30
color light-gray/blue black/light-gray
# End GRUB global section
# Other bootable partition config begins
title Windows (on /dev/sda1)
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
# Other bootable partition config ends
# Linux bootable partition config begins
title Linux (on /dev/sda2)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda2 ro vga=normal
# Linux bootable partition config ends
# Other bootable partition config begins
title Windows (on /dev/sda4)
map (hd0,0) (hd0,3)
map (hd0,3) (hd0,0)
rootnoverify (hd0,3)
makeactive
chainloader +1
# Other bootable partition config ends
title Install GRUB to floppy disk (on /dev/fd0)
pause Insert a formatted floppy disk and press enter.
root (hd0,1)
setup (fd0)
pause Press enter to continue.
title Install GRUB to Linux partition (on /dev/sda2)
root (hd0,1)
setup (hd0,1)
pause Press enter to continue.
title - For help press 'c', then type: 'help'
root (hd0)
title - For usage examples, type: 'cat /boot/grub/usage.txt'
root (hd0)

Again, thanks for taking time to write a long response. I'll look at it later today.

[shinobar]

I currently am multiple booting my computer with Win XP and Puppy (frugal install). Here are my partitions: sda1 NTFS (WinXP), sda2 ext2 (Puppy 5.20, 5.25, 5.28), sda3 swap, sda4 FAT. I used the Grub Bootloader Config off Puppy.

Now suppose I want to install Linux Mint or other other Linux Distro on another partition. Yes, I realize that I'll have to create another, 5th, partition on which to install the distro. For the sake of argument, it'll be sda5.

Please tell me how to go about installing the distro and what to edit on my menu.lst

Why don't you switch to Grub4Dos? It makes menu.lst automatically.
To make new partition, use Gparted.
BTW, there is Mint for Win which does not require new partition.

Grub4Dos and Gparted are both on Menu>System

[dk60902]

Thanks for the suggestion. That sounds much easier. That is what I was looking for, an easier way to set up multiple boots rather than somewhat complex editing in menu.lst. Currently, I have grub installed in the mbr. If I run grub4dos, will it remove the current grub?

[shinobar]

Currently, I have grub installed in the mbr. If I run grub4dos, will it remove the current grub?

Your MBR should be overwritten by the Grub4Dos.
But the other stuff of the legacy grub remains. It is harmless but you can remove whole the directory '/grub' or /boot/grub'.
Grub4Dos works only with its MBR code plus 2 files, '/grldr' and '/menu.lst' at the 1st partition.

Well if you install Mint, the Mint installer may overwrite the MBR with its Gub2 and the Puppy boot up entries are erased. In that case, boot up the Puppy agin by the live CD or some way and re-run Grub4Dos config to repair. The Grub4Dos config will hopefully autodetect the all Puppies and the Mint.

[dk60902]

Currently, I have grub installed in the mbr. If I run grub4dos, will it remove the current grub?

Your MBR should be overwritten by the Grub4Dos.
But the other stuff of the legacy grub remains. It is harmless but you can remove whole the directory '/grub' or /boot/grub'.
Grub4Dos works only with its MBR code plus 2 files, '/grldr' and '/menu.lst' at the 1st partition.

Well if you install Mint, the Mint installer may overwrite the MBR with its Gub2 and the Puppy boot up entries are erased. In that case, boot up the Puppy agin by the live CD or some way and re-run Grub4Dos config to repair. The Grub4Dos config will hopefully autodetect the all Puppies and the Mint.

Thank you for the advice.