Dual Booting PCLinuxOS and Ubuntu off the same harddisk?

[Alucard-sama]

Is this possible and if so how do I do it? (keeping in mind I want both to be detected by my bootloader?)

EDIT: OK so it's VERY possible.
Now I would like to know if it's possible to access documents saved in different distros' partitions?

[Glennzo]

Not only possible. Many people boot several distros. I have 4 Linux distros and XP on my desktop. The main disk is a 160GB sliced into 8 20GB parts. I installed Windows first, on the first partition, then installed the Linux distros, in no particular order. Ubuntu, Fedora Core 6, Fedora 7 and Debian. I let each distro install it's boot loader, and since I'm a Fedora nut I use Fedora's rescue mode to re-write GRUB and control booting from there. Let's say I install Ubuntu after Fedora, but I want Fedora's GRUB in control, I re-install Fedora's GRUB, boot to Fedora, mount the Ubuntu partition to get the boot stanza from Ubuntu's GRUB and add it to Fedora's GRUB. Sounds more complex than it is, but it's really pretty simple. I've had as many as 10 distros. I read about a kid who was booting around 125 distros. So short answer is yes, entirely possible.

[saikee]

I boot 150+ system in 5 hard disks but am not a kid.

It is a Linux user's God-given right to be able to have 63 and 15 partitions in a Pata and Sata disk respectively, disk space permitting. As one of the partition will be the extended partition which is an envelope for all the logical partitions inside therefore I see it a God-given right a Linux user can boot 62 and 14 operating systems in a Pata and a Sata disk respectively, by filling one OS per partition.

With a primary partition one can install VMware and stuff as many OS inside as well so I wouldn't be surprised if someone reports booting 100+ systems in a single Pata hard disk.

I believe the current availability of 1Tb hard disks have opened the door for even 200 to 300 bootable systems in one hard disk, using a technique suggested in this thread (http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?t=143808&highlight=200).

When you start to multi-boot you will find all boot loaders care is the partition references. The content inside is insignificant to them because every OS can be "chainloaded".

[saikee]

deleted due to repetition

[justdean]

I boot 150+ system in 5 hard disks but am not a kid.

Durn tootin' you're not. Hello, saikee. Thanks for the welcome in the other thread. You have my three OS HD down in a hearbeat.

<snip>

I believe the current availability of 1Tb hard disks have opened the door for even 200 to 300 bootable systems in one hard disk, using a technique suggested in this thread (http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?t=143808&highlight=200).

When you start to multi-boot you will find all boot loaders care is the partition references. The content inside is insignificant to them because every OS can be "chainloaded".

This is a great idea, but I doubt I would do it because I get confused enough with only three OS's on primary partitions. The way I do it is to put the boot loader for each OS (except for one I let have the MBR) onto a floppy. That way, I have some idea of which system I'm booting into before I get there.

I do believe you can access linux partitions for other OS's from a particular distro. At least, in the KDE control panel, you can see all the partitions specified. I haven't tried it myself, but I suspect someone around here has.

[saikee]

justdean,

The multi-booting can only be arranged in root console which is where the most of the Linux power and flexibility come from.

Like I mentioned earlier in multi-booting you aim at booting a partition therefore you identify each system by the partition it resides in.

The boot menu, for Grub it is menu.lst, is effectively a record of the systems you have installed.

As far as I am concerned every Linux user can, say haviing installed 12 systems, boot up any one and access to the remaining 11 partitions by just mounting them. Access to other Linux partitions is never distro-specific.

If you use the current version of Slax or Knoppix you will find all your partitions automatically mounted. It is confusing to see over a hundreds of "drives" but I also have to keep a record of the systems I installed into order to know Suse 9.1 is in hdc57, Saxen 1.1 in hdd59, NetBSD in sda11, FC6 in sdb15 etc.

I truly believe booting in Linux is a lot simpler than most users think.

In essence in the thread of booting 145 systems ( in my signature) I put optionally Grub in its own partition and generated the menu.lst for all the 145 systems before I even installed any of them. Every OS is booted by the same 3 lines changing only the partition reference.

I initially name each partition "empty". Before a OS is installed Grub can't boot anything. Once a system installed the "empty @ hdd55" can be booted if highlighted and the "return" key is pressed. Only after I know the system operating normally did I bother to alter the word "empty" with name of the distro like "Slax 6.0.0".