On Thursday 26 May 2005 23:04, Dr. Sharukh K. R. Pavri. wrote:
> On Thu, 26 May 2005, R M wrote:
> > add boot settings for new distro in the already
> > installed boot loader's config file.
>
> Can't be done, the OP says he has to have XP on this machine. So
> that will hog the mbr. What I suggest is install the bootloader on
> the first part of the respective root partitions.
Use grub as the boot loader. U dont need to reinstall grub unless u
install windows xyz AFTER installing grub. You just need to edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst. In the case of lilo u have to reinstall lilo
everytime u edit the /etc/lilo.conf. Also grub allows editing of
every parameter at boot time. It can also read file systems,
provides a shell (grub shell) and has online help. So it's very
handy if you are juggling distros, kernels and drives.
BIG FAT WARNING: write down what ever u are doing to prevent disaster.
Some distros do not create the menu.lst. So get one and copy it to
/boot/grub. Grub numbers disks and partitions starting with 0. So
hda5 - the first logical partition on the primary ide - is (hd0,4)
eg root (hd0,4)
Ideally install windoz first. Then the other distros.
Also create a mount point for the partition which holds /boot/grub
in all the installs, so that u can edit menu.lst easily.
In any case u can boot any distro from the grub shell like so
> root (hdx,y)
> kernel (hdx,y)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.11-abcd root=/dev/hda10 ide=ata100 dma etc etc append="whatever"
note root=/dev/hda10 is the regular linux naming convention..
if u have an initrd
> initrd (hdx,y)/initrd/initrd-2.6.11-abcd
> boot
rgds
jtd