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RE: Question about Dual boot Linux on one box



Some of the filesystem lend themselves better to dual-mounting than
others.  As Sun Liwen pointed out, mounting the swap partition on both
systems makes is a good idea.  Mounting /home on both systems is also an
excellent idea.  If you do this, all you applications should maintain
settings acroos both installations.  /var/www should be fine to share
also, assuming that this is the document root of an Apache installation.

Sharing /boot and and / is not a good idea however.  Particularly since
you don't have a separate /etc where all the machine specific
configuration files live.  You can get a lot of information on this
topic from the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard
(http://www.pathname.com/fhs/).

An advanced technique that you could consider is not to dual-boot at
all, but to run Debian in chroot environment under gentoo.  In this
setup, both distributions can run simultaneously while sharing the same
kernel.  I haven't this myself I'm afraid but there is plenty of
literature describing it.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sun Liwen [mailto:mozaiti@gmail.com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, 1 December 2004 4:39 PM
> To: Lian Liming; debian-user@lists.debian.org
> Subject: Re: Question about Dual boot Linux on one box
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Lian Liming" <lianliming@realss.com>
> To: <debian-user@lists.debian.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 2004 12:14 PM
> Subject: Question about Dual boot Linux on one box
> 
> 
> > Hi all,
> >     I have a box with a pre-installed gentoo system. Since 
> that system is 
> > installed by my friend and we share the same box,  i can't 
> destroy it. I'd 
> > like to use Debian system. So i am thinking about two boot 
> linux system --  
> > Gentoo && Debian -- working on the same box.
> >     There are several questions that i am quite confused as 
> following:
> >
> >     1) the partitions.
> >         The pre-installed gentoo system has the following 
> partitions:
> >               /dev/hda1 mount at /boot
> >               /dev/hda2 mount at swap
> >               /dev/hda3 mount  at /
> >               /dev/hda4 mount  at /home
> >               /dev/hda5 mount  at /var/www
> >         and there is another partition /dev/hda6 has no 
> filesystem on it.
> >        My questions about partitions is that, to install 
> debian system on 
> > it. Is it possible to share /boot, /home, /var/www with the 
> gentoo system? 
> > The advantage doing this is that we can share the 
> information better. If 
> > we share /home, then i can have accounts on both Gentoo and 
> Debian system. 
> > And the two accounts on both system share the same 
> directory, i don't need 
> > have two copy of my personal datas.
> >
> >         Another further and *crazy* question is that : can 
> i share "/" 
> > partition with Gentoo && Debian? I know that   they are all 
> linux system 
> > with similar filesystem structure, but Gentoo and Debian have their 
> > different features, for example, Gentoo has a way to hold 
> its portages 
> > system. To share the "/" really sounds crazy, but i just 
> wonder is it 
> > possible? Maybe someone else has tried on this.
> >        2) the boot loader program
> >        I am not familiar with the boot loader on Linux so 
> this is another 
> > question that confused me so much.
> >        The pre-installed Gentoo has installed "Grub" and 
> the boot loader 
> > is installed on mbr. So if i install debian, Should i 
> installed another 
> > boot loader such as Grub or lilo?
> >        Or is it possible that i don't install boot loader 
> on debian , and 
> > just use the "grub" on the Gentoo, add some entries to the 
> grub config 
> > file so that i can select debian on the system boot?
> >
> >    3) insteresting kernel question
> >        It is really an insteresting question, can i use the kernel 
> > compiling on the other system? For example, i compile a 
> 2.6.9 kernel on 
> > Gentoo, and i just copy the binary kernel to Debian system 
> and boot from 
> > the kernel on Debian. Actually, this question is not 
> important. I am just 
> > interested on this topic.
> >
> >
> >      I am not a linux guru and sorry for my poor English, 
> if i can't 
> > explain something clear, please think free to point it out.
> >     Thank you very much for any suggestion.
> 
> 
> hi,
> i have a box with debian and gentoo dual boot.
> they share swap partition only.
> but i play a little trick, i make the admin user on the 
> diferent system have 
> the
> same uid number, then i can share files.
> 
> i think you can install only one grub to boot the two system 
> with editing 
> menu.lst.
> ps: two grub is ok.
> 
> / directory is not suitable to share.
> 
> 
> poor english, too.
> 
> 
> 
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