[clug] Multiple distros on one HD

[paul at pabryan.mine.nu]

On Fri, Apr 01, 2005 at 01:12:49AM +1000, ellisfamily wrote:

<snip>

> 
> a. How do I persuade a new distro installation to share the lilo?
> b. Can I edit the lilo entry without having to re-install the 'second' 
> distro (Mandrake)?
> 

Post your /etc/lilo.conf so people can have a look and (hopefully) let
you know what changes to make.

I wonder though, if your problem is to do with partition labels. I
know RedHat (at least they used to) gives each partition a label and
then mounts the partitions (via /etc/fstab entries) using the
partition labels rather than the device files (e.g. /dev/hda2). 

If both SuSE and Mandrake have labelled their respective root partitions
labelled as "/" and use that label rather than the device to mount,
you would see the problem you're describing.

Try booting into SuSE and then Mandrake, running "uname -a" each
time. This will tell you which kernel is running. If they're
different, then you'll know you've booted with the correct kernels,
just with the same root filesystem each time. Change the /etc/fstab
entries to use the device file rather than the label and you should be
okay.

If however, you get the same kernel both times, we need to look
further. As I say, post your lilo conf file.

Cheers,
Paul.