2 replies to this topic

[christopher16940]

Hi everyone, this is my first post on your site, which I found whilst trawling through Google. Here goes:-

I have a 250 gig usb hard drive and what I am attempting to do is install mandriva 2010.1 and Open Suse 11.3 on it. Is this possible? I have installed Mandriva on the drive but can't seem able to install Suse without trashing Mandriva!! What I would really like is for a dual-booting expert to give me some guidance as I would really like to get both of these systems running. Or do I need to configure an exotic bootloader to get things going? Any help very gratefully received.


Some facts about me; Age 69, retired, hobbies computing, croquet and fishing (freshwater) Country of residence Great Britain, County of Suffolk, town Ipswich. You can pm if you wish, I like to chat. Thanks again.

[Maggot]

christopher16940, on 17 August 2010 - 11:36 AM, said:

Hi everyone, this is my first post on your site, which I found whilst trawling through Google. Here goes:-

I have a 250 gig usb hard drive and what I am attempting to do is install mandriva 2010.1 and Open Suse 11.3 on it. Is this possible? I have installed Mandriva on the drive but can't seem able to install Suse without trashing Mandriva!! What I would really like is for a dual-booting expert to give me some guidance as I would really like to get both of these systems running. Or do I need to configure an exotic bootloader to get things going? Any help very gratefully received.


Some facts about me; Age 69, retired, hobbies computing, croquet and fishing (freshwater) Country of residence Great Britain, County of Suffolk, town Ipswich. You can pm if you wish, I like to chat. Thanks again.

Does a error show up when you install both the operating systems ??

I do not know much about this Operating systems but try installing one after another and see if the dual boot worked.....

[The Simpleton]

Hi, I haven't tried installing two linux distributions alongside one another, but I have a general idea which just might work, although I haven't tried it myself. Linux distributions normally require three partitions - one each for the 'root' and 'home' directories, and one for the 'swap' area. You mentioned that you have already installed Mandriva. Did you do this automatically, i.e., without configuring the partitions, or did you specify the partitions yourself?

In any case, here's my idea: when you're running setup (of either Mandriva or SUSE), look for the screen where you are able to select the partitions manually. Make sure you have free space on your hard disk, and from this free space, create six empty partitions such that two of them can be root partitions (i.e. of larger size for holding system files), two are for the home partitions (can be any size you prefer) and two are swap areas (at least double the amount of your RAM). It's best if you create three partitions while installing one distro and leave the remaining free space as it is, so that when you come back for installing the other distro, you can use that free space to create new partitions again. I hope I'm not confusing you! It's all about creating partitions so that the distro is able to identify where it is being installed into. I'm guessing you weren't able to install both of them because one of the distros was filling up the entire hard disk. Try this partitions idea and post back here if you're running into any problems.

Important: Make sure there isn't any important data on your hard disk!!!