[CentOS] Multiple Linux instances on the same box - dual/triple/etc boot ?

Bill Campbell centos at celestial.com
Fri Sep 19 23:14:12 UTC 2008


On Fri, Sep 19, 2008, Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams wrote:
>On Fri, 2008-09-19 at 13:52 -0600, kevin kempter wrote:
>> I'd like to install each OS/version into it's own space on the disk.   
>> I'm thinking all I have to do is install one OS (say CentOS 64bit) and  
>> partition say 20% of the disk. Then once the install is done, boot  
>> into the latest fedora disk and do the same, etc.
>> 
>> Is this correct ?
>
>Yes, but you should probably use a shared /boot, which means 3 things:

I used to do this, but quit when systems became able to boot from
places on the disk > 1024.

The problem with a shared /boot is that it is very easy for poor
installation/update procedures to do wierd things to render the
system unbootable.

I much prefer using the free VMware server for development and
testing different OS versions.  It's far more difficult to screw
the pooch using virtual machines, and one can always make snapshots
before upgrades or major changes making it easy to undo the
changes and try again.  I find this invaluable when testing major
software installations.

Bill
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