On 03/03/11 4:10 AM, Phil Savoie wrote: > When booting a system with multiple operating systems, it is true that > only one operating system may be in use at one time, however, those > other operating systems are installed on the disk in partitions. These > partitions may be mounted like any other filesystem, hence the ability > to use them while a single instance of an operating system is running. > It's all done via the /etc/fstab and through mount options. I am not a fan of multiple booting. Multiple OS's can make a mess of file system permissions if you're not careful. For instance, if you have multiple linux installs, you'll need to go to some troubles to ensure their /etc/passwd stays in sync or they'll make a mess of each others ownership.. and mapping linux user numbers to Windows user ID's for NTFS is non-trivial. Computer security overhead is multiplied times the number of OSs. If you haven't booted that windows system for a few weeks, expect to spend a good hour with Windows Update, Antivirus updates, web browser & plugin updates, adobe, etc etc before using it next time. A network configuration change would have to be made to all the different OS's. etc etc. and, when all is said and done, your system's bootstrap sequence becomes a rather fragile house of cards.