Dualboot with Mandrake

[John Herdy]

Gents,

I want to try Gentoo but I don't want to give up my Mandrake installation (yet). I want to create a dualboot but I already have a root and swap partition used by Mandrake. Is it possible to create another root and swap partition for Gentoo. I want Gentoo and Mandrake to operate completely seperate. I have searched trough the Gentoo-forum but only found dualboot-questions/solutions regarding Windows. Any tips and tricks would be appreciated.

Regards,
John Herdy.

[pjp]

It should be essentially the same. Since you have Mandrake installed, you can use that boot
manager to add Gentoo. Of course, you'll need partitions to do it
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[John Herdy]

Thanks for your reply. I understand how to add Gentoo to my bootmanager the part I don't understand is how to create 2 root and swap partitions (1 for Mandrake and 1 for Gentoo). Windows doesn't use these partitions so I only have to mount the Windows-partition. IMHO it's not the same. Do you have a little bit more information?

Regards,
John Herdy.

[pjp]

What is your current partition table on the drive you would like to dual boot?
I wouldn't waste time creating 2 swap partitions with the intent to give
Mandrake and Gentoo their own swaps.
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[Gorgar]

WARNING THIS MAY NOT WORK I HAVEN'T TESTED IT YET

I can get it booting the gentoo kernel and running the initrd but had been having problems with the init bit.
Any input would be appreciated

I AM DOING THIS EXACT THING TONITE :twisted




Create gentoo in some directory say /gentoo on you're root drive
mkdir /gentoo/oldrootstuff
create a symbolic link on your mandrake stuff from
/lib/modules/<WHATEVER YOU'RE GENTOO KERNEL IS> to /gentoo/lib/modules/<WHATEVER YOU'RE GENTOO KERNEL IS>

if you are using mandrake, then copy the initrd.img from the /boot directory.

* gunzip it
* mount it as a loop device
* edit the linuxrc file
delete all the code from in this file
and replace it with something like

#! /bin/bash
mkdir new_root

#insert your hd device here

mount /dev/hd?? new_root
mount --bind new_root /new_root/gentoo/oldrootstuff
cd new_root/gentoo
pivot_root . oldrootstuff
exec /sbin/init

<END OF FILE>

then call this file /boot/gentoord

in you're lilo.conf file create a new entry called gentoo
copy everything from you're current mandrake entry into it
change the 'initrd= ' section to 'init=/boot/gentoord'

and then run LILO

good luck.

[Gorgar]

OK Scratch the above it didn't quite work.

Got it working like this...

Create gentoo in some directory say /gentoo on you're root drive
mkdir /gentoo/oldrootstuff
create a symbolic link on your mandrake stuff from
/lib/modules/<WHATEVER YOU'RE GENTOO KERNEL IS> to /gentoo/lib/modules/<WHATEVER YOU'RE GENTOO KERNEL IS>

create a file called /gentoo/linuxrc
make it executable

in it have

#!/bin/bash

echo Mounting /proc filesystem

mount -t proc /proc /proc
mount --bind / /gentoo/oldrootstuff

echo Starting Gentoo
exec /usr/sbin/chroot /mnt/gentoo /sbin/init

<END OF FILE>

in your lilo.conf have an entry like this but modify with your own disk stuff

image=/boot/gentoo
label=gentoo
root=/dev/hda7
append="init=/gentoo/linuxrc devfs=mount"
read-write

and then run LILO

This sort of thing can be used to dual boot any linux distributions without
repartitioning as long as you create a new root structure for each one.

[John Herdy]

Thanks for your time and support I really appreciate it. It helps a lot. I'm starting to like Gentoo so much that a dualboot may not be neccesary.

Regards,
John Herdy.

PS. sorry for my late reply.

[iKiddo]

I did it quite easily, I had 3 partitions for Mandrake (one swap and one / and one /boot) and added another for gentoo. I then simply installed gentoo using the install instructions where I used my Mandrake /boot and swap partitions as Gentoo /boot and swap partitions too. I just created a new / partition for Gentoo (using the Mandrake partitioning tool). It works fine...

[isdnip]

I had Gentoo 1.1a running with /dev/hda10 as its / partition. I also had Red Hat or something else with /dev/hda7 as its own / partition, with /hda8 as a common /home and /hda9 as a common swap. It was okay for a while, noting that Red Has there before Gentoo, but Gentoo put in its own grub (not lilo). I was not using Red Hat much, mostly Win98 on /hda2, but was also frustrated about the gentoo install. So I decided to try Mandrake Cooker ("8.3", which is not a real number), which has KDE3 and GNOME2. But being Cooker, is allowed to be buggy....

Anyway, after playing with Mandrake Cooker for a while, I decided to go back into Gentoo to tackle some issues (like pam.d, which was waaaaay too restrictive for me). Lo and behold, booting it gives me:

Kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel.

Now the grub.conf file looks like this:


timeout 10
color black/cyan yellow/cyan
i18n (hd0,0)/grub/messages
keytable (hd0,0)/us.klt
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
altconfigfile (hd0,0)/grub/menu.once
default 3

title Mandrake Linux
kernel (hd0,0)/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda7 devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi
initrd (hd0,0)/initrd.img

title Gentoo Linux
kernel (hd0,0)/vmlinuz-2.4.18-3 root=/dev/hda10 devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi
initrd (hd0,0)/initrd-2.4.18-3.img

The initrd files and kernel files are both on the boot partiition /hda1. I didn't do anything to /hda10, and /usr/sbin/init is present in both Mandrake and Gentoo (though not identical files, a few bytes different length).

Any clues about how to get gentoo going again? (I couldn't come up with an init= option that worked.) Or do I need to start again from scratch (probably with 1.3)? Thanks.

[chevymoon]

I did it quite easily, I had 3 partitions for Mandrake (one swap and one / and one /boot) and added another for gentoo. I then simply installed gentoo using the install instructions where I used my Mandrake /boot and swap partitions as Gentoo /boot and swap partitions too. I just created a new / partition for Gentoo (using the Mandrake partitioning tool). It works fine.


Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but it doesn't sound to me like iKiddo did it Gorgar's way. I would prefer ikiddo's idea since Gorgar's doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Was it as straight forward as declaring hda1 as the Gentoo boot partition during install? What boot loader was used?

I'm trying to be careful because I've already tried this once and screwed the pooch.

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[chevymoon]

Let me re-phrase the question. In a dual boot situation with another Linux distro, how concerned should I be about sharing the /boot partition between the two?

[pjp]

As long as you keep kernels and menu.lst organized, it shouldn't be a problem.

This thread might be of interest.
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[chevymoon]

Thanks. That does help some. Specifically, I want to make sure that there aren't gentoo files that will overwrite mankdrake files when install to the boot partition. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the kernels go by different names (i.e., bzImage for Gentoo, vmlinuz-2.4.19etc for Mandrake). So there shouldn't be conflict there. But, I looked inside the Mandrake /boot and there are many other files to be concerned with. Will these conflict with a Gentoo install?

[pjp]

I've not used Mandrake, so I'm not sure what files it uses. As an example, here is what my /boot contains:

[Zaxon]

From my experiences they live in harmony on the boot partition and it should not be a problem, i had a dual boot with mandrake 8.2 and gentoo 1.2, don't know if that has changed though...
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[chevymoon]

Thanks again, guys. I did indeed Gentoo installed last night. No problems whatsoever with the shared /boot and /swap partitions.

Now I've got an "emerge kde" problem. That's another thread, though...