Ubuntu Installation :: Booting Multiple Distros From USB - Choose Which One To Boot From?
Oct 31, 2010
With the startup disk creator on Ubuntu (Currently running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS) I realised you could boot Ubuntu from a USB and then install it onto the HDD if you wish to. *Side note* Still amazes me you can run a whole operating system from a USB memory stick drive *End Side note* Now My question is: 'Is it possible to have multiple distros of Linux on a USB memory stick and choose which one you wish to boot from when you boot up the computer?'I was hoping to get a seagate portable HDD ((here) and load quite a few different Linux distros on it to get a broader view of Linux than just Ubuntu (Although Ubuntu does rock ).
Is there simple ways of doing this? I have read around this forum and Google and a suggestion was given to install all of the distros onto the portable HDD/ USB memory stick and then install Ubuntu onto it last as its good for picking up other OSes in its GRUB. (Again if my idea on GRUB and its workings are wrong please point it out - got to keep learning)
View 1 Replies
ADVERTISEMENT
Jun 21, 2011
I currently am in an adventurous phase and want to try other distros while still having a reliable, stable Ubuntu installation to fall back on. I'm currently in the process of partitioning my disks, and I realized that I might have trouble booting them, as the most recently installed would control GRUB and clobber any previous GRUB setup. So what I want to know is how to go about managing everything so that only one distro, preferably Ubuntu, has control of the GRUB menu at boot up, and will still recognize the other distros on other partitions.
I plan to have three 15GB root partitions, one swap, and one home partition for each distro.
Would I create a /boot for each distro? Or create one /boot with files from each distro copied there? Or should I do something else entirely?
I just don't want the distros to interfere with each other. Also, I don't want to use VMs for this, because I want to see what a real full-performance install is like for each distro.
View 6 Replies
View Related
Mar 27, 2010
Noobish question on multibooting multiple Linux distros. I have four of the current major Linux distributions. Each has been installed and run individually (no other Linux distribution installed) in a dual-boot configuration with Windoze. No problem.
What I want to do is install all four Linux distributions and multiboot them. Reading the internet it would seem this is a simple task with GRUB. The short version being - install a Linux distro with a separate /boot partition for GRUB and use GRUB to boot the other Linux distros from the GRUB boot menu.
So I installed one of the Linux distros with a separate partition for /boot. The distro installer installed GRUB in /boot and correctly setup a dual-boot configuration with Windoze. GRUB was installed to the MBR. Next I installed a second Linux distro in its own root partition and told the distros installer NOT to install GRUB to the MBR, but rather, to the boot sector of the root partion of the second Linux distro. Installation was uneventful (and I could access the second Linux partition from the first installed Linux distro, things looked ok). Then I added to following to the installed (MBR - /boot) GRUB's menu.lst:
Code: title lixux distro 2
root (hd0,7)
chainloader +1 After which I rebooted the system and the new entry for the second Linux distro now appears in the GRUB boot menu. I selected the second Linux distro from the boot menu and got the following GRUB error: Error 5 : Partition table invalid or corrupt
[Code]....
View 8 Replies
View Related
Jan 22, 2011
i decided to build a home server on an AMD64 (buyed some years ago) for file storage, printer sharing and something else... I've searched a lot for "the best distros for server" and discarding extreme solution (like command line only) what remains is: Ubuntu, Fedora and Debian
Now the problem: how to install more than one distros on the same hdd? what i know is that i need a bootloader (grub/lilo) and partitions for boot,swap, and remaining space will be split for the distro itself.
I think is a good idea to have a partition only for files (/data) that all distros can access, but for sure i'd like to have one /root and one /home partitions each distro!
I can't understand if the correct way is first of all to install a distro (let's say ubuntu), then set up everything such as partitions and bootloader and then install other distros. I'd like to know if it is possible to manage dinamycally the space reserved for distros, so i'll be able to install 2,3,4,5...distros with no problems.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Apr 27, 2010
how to dual boot off of a usb. I am trying to learn to do them manually. What i do know is that i need a GRUB, and a splash screen of chuck norris., 2 ISO's, my usb is 16 GB FAT 32, grubbed up.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Apr 24, 2010
I dual boot multiple distros of Ubuntu and I'm trying to use my /home from 9.10 for 10.04 also.Is this possible? If not, does anyone know if I can copy sections of my 9.10 Crossover files to my 10.04 /home. Biggest thing is for WoW which takes forever to load each new distro I upgrade to.
View 6 Replies
View Related
Feb 19, 2010
My hard disk is :
/dev/sda2 Primary Linux ext3
/dev/sda3 Primary Windows
/dev/sda5 Logical Linux ext3 /boot
/dev/sda6 Logical Swap
/dev/sda7 Logical Linux Ext3 /home
/dev/sda8 Logical Linux ext3 /
[Code]...
After this install I wished to try out Backtrack 4 which I installed on /dev/sda2. The version of GRUB which was installed with Ubuntu 9.10 got wiped out and the version of GRUB with backtrack was installed . However the menu did not consist of the Ubuntu 9.10 booting option . How should I edit menu.lst so that I can get all my Ubuntu 9.10 booting option along with my backtrack installation
View 9 Replies
View Related
Sep 12, 2010
I know it's possible to to have multiple distros on one hard disk, and set it up so you can just have one /home partition and use it for all of the distros on that system. My question is, how efficient is that? Does it bloat the /home out with a whole bunch of stuff that might slow a particular distro down because it's filled with stuff from another? (I.e configs). And let's say I have two distros that are of different bases, say ubuntu and arch, does this make a difference? I know obviously that my personal files will all be accessible and not matter which distro they are being read from, but I'm talking more about the hidden stuff.
View 7 Replies
View Related
Dec 15, 2010
I dual booted Karmic on my old laptop. I just received my new machine, Envy 17 with a 160 GB SSD and a 640 GB hard drive with Windows 7 pre-installed. I want to multiboot Windows, Maverick and the CAElinux distro, on the SSD I am thinking. I am in the process of searching the forums in regards to partitioning strategies and hints to smooth the installs.
View 9 Replies
View Related
Aug 8, 2010
How is this supposed to work out? I noticed some distros are really good about recognizing your other linux distros and some not. They keep recognizing windows, but not other linux distros. Also, I have run into a few problems when my operating systems were on different hard drives. I have my operating systems running from a small 250gb laptop hard drive with special mounting and am using my TB hard drive for internal storage /data.However, my last attempt at installing a linux partition on the TB hard drive with Windows and another linux partition on the laptop hard drive didnt work out so well. Updating grub via the command line didnt sort this out. Sudo su root Apt-get update grub (or grub update) or whatever didnt work before when I tried it.
View 4 Replies
View Related
May 22, 2010
I want to make a DVD with Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and Xubuntu so i can choose one to start a live session when booting from the disc. I'd like to introduce linux to friends and having a few variations might make it easier to transition.
View 3 Replies
View Related
May 11, 2011
I was wondering what the best way is to partition multiple distros to share one home partition.
View 8 Replies
View Related
Sep 29, 2010
Just migrating to linux but I don't want to give up linux just yet so I've stuck in a 2nd hard drive to install linux on which I've done, now I have windows on one hard drive and linux on the other but my computer boots straight onto linux. I need the option to choose which os to boot into on startup which I've heard GRUB is the best option but I have no idea how to go about setting this up.
View 3 Replies
View Related
Sep 7, 2010
I'm trying to make my own boot CD with different linux distros and tools. These are the things I'm going to include on the CD:Lucid Puppy 5.11 (Live)Damn Small Linux (Live)Gparted LiveArch linux net install(Total size: about 600 MB)I was thinking about using GRUB legacy as the boot manager on the CD, but I'm wondering how I can install GRUB to a CD. I've been experimenting with the live CD of Ubuntu, but when i start to delete the Ubuntu files (which I don't need) it messes up the filesystem manifest and I'm left with a non-bootable .iso. So I want to build GRUB from scratch and add all the entries to the menu.lst.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Feb 29, 2016
Some thing quite bad happened to me , i installed debian jessie about 2 month ago. Today I wanted to try what a gnu/linux is like so I installed dragora 2.2 on one of my free partitions , (sda 1 is my debian root , sda2 is my debian home, I had sda4 which nothing was on it so i installed dragora on it. But something bad happened , during boot time you get this page which asks you what distro you want to enter in past I had just one choice and it was debian jessie, I expected after installing dragora I will see 2 distros on this page, but i get just 1 , and that's dragora ... but maybe i should mention this that when entering dragora i can access all my previous files , debian systemfile , debian home , they are still there but i can't enter debian jessie ...
View 2 Replies
View Related
Jul 9, 2009
I have a drive... let's say SDA1 On that drive I do a F10 install.
Now I remove the drive and put another drive in and did F11 install on another drive in the SDA1 slot.
Now I put the other first drive in.
Now, F10 is on SDA1 and F11 is on SDB1.
What can I add to FSTAB and GRUB.CONF so I can choose which drive I want to use at boot time?
View 14 Replies
View Related
Jul 1, 2010
I'm in the process of trying several different distro's live before deciding which I want to run a new net book. So I make I live USB. But what happens if I put moe than one distro on the USB? Will I get a menu to chose? or will I have problems?
View 1 Replies
View Related
Feb 5, 2011
I can't stay without ubuntu a single day. That's it. I said it. But I definitely need windows 7 cause I'm a heavy gamer. But I also like to keep and use other distros like Fedora. I came to read that only ubuntu uses GRUB 2.0 and it automatically detects all the distros which should be listed by GRUB 1.0. My question is,
How Can i set up the Multiple OS machine Ubuntu + Fedora / BackTrack / Suse + Windows 7? Someone on IRC channel told me that I just install Ubuntu last and it will detect all operating systems automatically.. But I'm a quite reluctant to that kind of short answer. It's now your call experts.
View 6 Replies
View Related
May 17, 2011
It's a little silly to ask this, as I am about to try it anyway, but is it theoretically possible to use a GRUB Legacy USB boot cd to boot a distro beyond 9.04? Or do I need to get to reading about GRUB 2?EDIT: As the USB Boot CD needs to be created from the GRUB files existing inside the Distro that it is intended to boot, this is impossible. Question answered.DIT EDIT: Unless I revert to GRUB legacy inside the Distro itself. Ok. Neat. I guess I just needed a place to write it down to figure it out
View 3 Replies
View Related
Jan 19, 2010
Why would some people choose wubi over dual-booting?
View 1 Replies
View Related
Apr 2, 2010
I'm testing out 10.04 on one of my partitions, and I love it. I have been using it exclusively for a while now, I have not logged into Windows since! Really don't care about windows anymore!However, yesterday I went to boot into windows... and I noticed the option to choose it is missing from my list! Maybe I'm just not getting to the correct list? The list I get shows like 5 different modes and versions of Ubuntu and something called Windows Recovery (which does nothing), but that's it.
View 9 Replies
View Related
May 20, 2009
I got Fedora LiveCD version on my USB....but I would like to test many other distros on the same USB. Is there a way to have all of the distros on my USB, and when I open the boot menu on startup, I can choose which distro to boot?
View 5 Replies
View Related
Jul 15, 2010
How could i use Wubi to install multiple/different distros in one PC? After installing one distro and re-launching Wubi for install the 2nd one requires to uninstall the first one. Is it possible to stop the uninstall routine?
View 1 Replies
View Related
Sep 15, 2010
I'm interested in testing Maverick, (or the next release, or the one after that) but always run into a problem with testing that runs alone the lines of.I have my current install (10.04) I have two partitions, / and /home, it works well.As soon as I add a new version it seems to be recommended NOT to have them both point to the same /home partition, the problem is, if I don't do that I don't have all my files, and it's a pain in the rear to setup.So what I was thinking is to have three basic partitions,
/
/home (for config files, and true HOME files)
/data (for all my actual data)
Create links from say /home/james/documents to link to /data/documents that way I can get to my documents.This way if I add a new version I can setup either the same (two partitions, / and /home and point /home/xyz/documents to /data/documents) or keep it slightly simpler for testing, just have one partition and repoint /home/xyz/documents to /data/documents.The main one I can think of would be permissions for files/folders?
View 4 Replies
View Related
Mar 8, 2011
I know that I can get information from my running kernel using the uname command.My question is, how can I retrieve the kernel information from the other distros without booting into them?For example, I have Debian installed on /dev/sdd1 with two kernels in /boot. How do I go about getting the information from these kernels similar to what uname gives?
View 1 Replies
View Related
Feb 26, 2010
I want to switch to a different distro. So now I have 2 linux distros on my computer, and also win 7 (as a backup). how do i delete the other distros and keep the one I want?
View 4 Replies
View Related
Jan 19, 2010
I want to install multiple distros on one hd just to get some experience with them. I'm wanting to try out different distros and DE's, so I think I'm settled on wanting to install Ubuntu, Mandriva (or PCLOS), opensuse, and Linux Mint, all on a 40GB drive, giving a little more than 10GB to one of them to use as my primary Linux OS. I also have a current XP install on another hard drive that I'd want to leave connected so GRUB will detect it (not touching it at all during OS installs).
After trying several times to get 4 (or even 3) OS' installed on one drive using one GRUB has been a pain, so it looks like I'll have to put each OS' GRUB on it's respective partition and use one OS' GRUB as a primary in the MBR. With all that being said:
1. What's the best GRUB to use? Much difference between Ubuntu 9.10's and Mint 8's?
2. I'm not worried about saving data on a separate /home partition, so could I use one swap partition and a / root for each OS (giving each one about 10GB)? Would that just mean resizing the previous install's partition and manually creating a 10GB / ?
3. I've read the GRUB 2 guide several times, and when manually adding all of the GRUB's in different partitions to the "main" GRUB, all I need to enter is the title, root entry, and possibly chainloader +1?? This is the area I need the most help in... manually adding entries to GRUB 2... not too worried about Windows because that's usually detected, just adding other distros.
View 4 Replies
View Related
Jan 15, 2010
I read somewhere that it's good to partition to several partitions, and even better to have separate parts on different hard drives, or even to have different distros, like Ubuntu or this or that UNIX-based OS on different hard drives, to maximize the functioning quality of your server.Unfortunately I only have one HDD and one computer at the moment, and although I can add more later when I've got the $$$, right now I'd like to know the best way to set up a partitioning sequence.
In addition, I have Windows 7 currently installed, and would like to keep it here. I've partitioned my internal HDD which is 250GB to only have 50GB to Windows 7, and I have ALL my data besides relevant application data stored on either my PS3 YDL 6.2, which has a 500GB HDD, and on my 1TB external HDD.So, what is the best partitioning sequence considering 180GB of space, a 50GB Windows 7 partition, and no other hard drives connected to the server? Also what/what OS to put on the different partitions?
View 1 Replies
View Related
Aug 26, 2010
I just recently purchased a Lenovo Netbook s10 3c which I planned to use for working and such. I have always been interested in the idea of using a Linux system, and so I downloaded the ISOs for Ubuntu Netbook 10.04 and also for Ubuntu Desktop 10.04 and 9.04 as well has Fedora 13. (I wanted to try some out.)
Unfortunately, for ALL of the distros, I run into a snag. When installing any of them, my keyboard will not respond to any keystrokes, even arrow keys, enter or caps lock. I have searched on google, linux forums, ubuntu forums and lenova's site, all to no avail. It seems that everyone who is having problems is having problems with some other sort of system which involves a virtual keyboard or USB keyboard (I do not want to have to use a USB keyboard - that would silly considering I bought the thing for easy portability).
View 3 Replies
View Related
May 11, 2011
I tried out many distros on my desktop before experimenting with my oshiba Satellite A665 laptop with integrated intel graphics. Everything worked out as normal until I was testing Ubuntu on a live cd, I clicked install and it sent me back to the login screen before I had made an account. So I then chose to restart and it started glitching so I had to manually power off. Ever since then whichever distros I try to install, they face numerous errors. On Ubuntu and Peppermint they freeze on the 5 dots installation part and Linux Mint just has a permanent black screen. Even the current Peppermint OS (only distro i have)hangs on the 5 dots when trying to boot onto the computer. This has resulted me in a computer that cant do anything, i've tried the noquiet and nosplash options but they don't seem to work. I was thinking of installing Windows and maybe erasing the disk by installing another distro later?
View 8 Replies
View Related
