On Tue, Feb 26, 2002 at 09:32:37PM +0300, Borsenkow Andrej wrote: > On ??????, 2002-02-26 at 20:21, Keld Jørn Simonsen wrote: > > Hi again, > > > > Another wish: I am running several systems on my brand new 60 Gb disk: > > a stable linux, the mdk82b3 beta, I also have mdk82beta1 installed, and > > then an old one and then windows. Happy for my new disk:-) > > Could not have done this beta testing without it... > > All of these systems run with their own roots, and a common /boot > > and /home. DrakX (I think) does a good job of determining > > which boot kernels there are and also the associated initrd's > > but when it comes to guessing the root it thinks it is all > > the same. I did an observation that the initrd's are very > > dependent on the root they are using, as this is recorded in them. > > At least it records the file type, I have had ext2, ext3 and reiserfs > > roots and an initrd will only boot the type of roots it was made for > > (could you override this by a parameter to the kernel boot?) > > > It requires too much changes to be done for 8.2
It was only a wish. I thought it would only require two patches, one to generate the enhanced initrd name, and then one to parse this name and generate the correct root entry. Not much. > > So why not record this in the name of the initrd, and then use > > this name to generate the root entry in the lilo.conf? > > ex initrd-2.4.8-27mdk-hda7.img would have root=/dev/hda7 > > Maybe Redhat and others dont do that but that would be their problem. > > > > Your setup is highly unusual. Why do you need common /boot in the first > place? Put you kernels on root; what I do is to have master lilo in MBR > that have > > other=/dev/hda7 > ... > other=/dev/hdb6 > ... > > for every other installed system and install lilo on partition for each > of them. This way there is no need to regenerate master lilo for every > change in other systems. Well, my way of doing it was sort of already taken care of, and I just wanted to make it working, fully automagic, Mandrake style:-) I did the /boot on a specific partition to avoid problems with the 2Gb limit, so it is an old setup. I now also have mounts of all my new file systems in boot, then I do not have to remake the mount points for each installation. Have you got any advice for how to have more systems, for testing on a single computer? Should /var be retained when shifting from one system to another? I am thinking of web pages, data bases ftp areas, and specially installed software like ooo. Home should be retained, but what else? Can this be generalized so it would also apply to a normal user that upgrades by installing a new system? Kind regards keld
