Re: Can Separate Partitions Interfere?

[Ethan Benson <erbenson@alaska.net>]

On Wed, Feb 23, 2000 at 07:38:23AM -0800, Lane Lester wrote:
> That may not be the best way to phrase the Subject, but my problems with
> ppp with both Debian and Mandrake suggest this possibility to me.
> 
> On my system I have three Linux installations: Corel, Debian, and
> Mandrake. The latter two will not connect me to the Internet, and the
> basic complaint is that ppp support is not included in the kernel. I did
> not say "no" to anything that looked like it might something to do with
> this, and in fact, with my latest Mandrake install, I took the Install
> Everything option.
> 
> So is it possible that these Linuxes are interfering with each other in
> some way? The boot process certainly looks like the three are
> independent, and the X interface is unique to each.  However, I do see
> in the Mandrake boot (dmesg stuff) repeated errors that say
> /boot/System.map has incorrect kernel version."

if you didn't do the partitioning/lilo right then that is most
certainly possible, you should have at a minimum 3 partitions, each of
which is a root file system for each of the 3 dists:

/etc/lilo.conf (one of them anyway) should be like this:

boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
vga=normal
compact
prompt
timeout=30
default=linux

image=/vmlinuz
        label=debian
        alias=linux
        read-only
        root=/dev/hda1
	## this is your debian installation, you would need to have
	## booted debian for this config file to work.

image=/mandrake/boot/vmlinuz
	label=mandrake
	read-only
	root=/dev/hda2
	## this is for mandrake, you must have /dev/hda2 mounted on
	## /mandrake in debian

image=/coral/boot/vmlinuz
	label=coral
	read-only
	root=/dev/hda3
	## see mandrake.

see what i am doing?  when you run lilo the two inactive systems'
partitions must be mounted on /coral and /mandrake (/debian /mandrake
if you were booted into coral) this is so lilo can find the 3
different kernels and map them.  when you boot you get a boot: prompt
where you can type mandrake to boot mandrake and debian to boot debian
and so on. this makes sure each has its own kernel booted and that it
uses the right root filesystem.

sounds to me like you only have lilo pointed at the same kernel for
all 3 but are giving that kernel a different root filesystem for each
of your systems.  (ie do you have a lilo conf like above but do all 3
have the image=/boot/vmlinuz?)

i hope i made this clear... 

-- 
Ethan Benson