Dual boot SuSE and Mandrake.

[jmtjet]

I have Suse 9.0 installed alone on one harddrive. Is it possible to install Mandrake 9.3 in a dual boot configuration with SuSE? Grub is already there as the boot manager. Thanks.

 

[pansophic]

The short answer is yes. But there are some interesting issues. You want to be careful that you don't share a root partition, or a /boot partition, etc. Not that you can't mount the partitions of one OS from the other, but you don't want to use the same /etc, /boot, /lib, /usr/lib and probably a host of others because they contain configuration or kernel data.

But, you should be able to share a /home directory and possibly a /var directory.


pansophic

 

[jmtjet]

Thanks for the reply. I don't have any Windows partitions on this harddrive. Would be possible to use fdisk to partition for the Mandrake install, or is that even necessary?

Since I've copy of Mandrake 9.2(ISO)I'd like to try it without disturbing SuSE.

 

[pansophic]

The repartitioning thing is always a problem. I understand that SuSE has a repartitioning tool (not fdisk) that can safely change partition sizes without destroying data. I've never tried it myself.

fdisk can be used to repartion the drive, but it is destructive, so you'd have to sacrafice at least one partition. The two installs could share a swap file as far as I know.


pansophic