Does Anybody Triple Boot? Would like some advice.

I'm currently Dual-Booting XP and Vista RC2.

I'm going to Erase my Hidden Acer Partition to make room so I can have 4 primary partitions. I have 3 copy of restore Backups on DVD. So I'm OK

I will doing a FRESH INSTALL on ALL.

I plan on having Swap, XP Media, Ubuntu Edgy, & Vista as my Primary Partitions.

XP will ofcoruse be my biggest Partition.

My HD is 120GB.


Any idea of how I should allocate the size of my Partitions.

Will the restore CD put the Hidden Partition back on my cd? If so, then I guess I'll load XP first.

And good suggestions on the config of the linux extended partitions?

ETC: ETC:

 

my current triple-boot on 80gb:
1. XP (30gb)
2. Vista RC2 (20gb)
3. Linux Suse 10.1
- a. swap (4gb)
- b. install (decided by gParted)
- c. home (decided by gParted)

i use an usb stick with FAT32 as exchange location for files between Linux and Windows
Boot up sequence is always Grub-Linux, when choosing windows then it would come up with vista or "previous version of windows" for xp

i do not know about the recovery partition since i have not been using it for a long while, but i would think that if you perform a complete new installation u would loose it

or u can try using gParted to resize the XP and Vista partition (one at a time) to keep the system intact - a defrag is always recommended before the resizing. And then use the free space for linux (swap/install/home)

i personally would not recommend resizing

cheers ...

 

decided by gparted? Do you mean the Gparted included in Suse install? I know Ubuntu doesn't do that. You have any idea the sizes of your extended install and home partitions?

What Bootloader is best? I liked the Windows Bootloader that was put in by Vista better than GRUB. It easier to config too. IMO

And yea, I don't plan on resizing. I'm starting everything from scratch. I will format my whole HD first. Then use Gparted Live to size/spilt up my partitions. After that I'll just load them up (OS's).

The only problem I might have is if the recovery cd putting back the recovery Partition. But I guess I can easily delete that afterwards.

 

I believe Ubuntu does come with Gparted, and it is launched before you install the OS using the installation DVD.
GRUB isn't all that difficult to configure at all. But if you are going to use Windows most of the time, then use the Windows Bootloader, as you cannot edit the GRUB bootloaded from Windows.

 

Yea, I'm going to install Vista last so hopefully I will get the windows bootloader.

I know Ubuntu comes with Gparted, but it doesn't auto make the extended Partitions as qhn stated (I think thats what he meant).

 

FYI, 4GB of swap is obscene. You shouldn't need more than a gig, max, especially if you have a decent amount of RAM.

 

But would that much mem in swap help anything? I might use 2gb.

 

appreciate ur opinion,
i carry 1.5gb, with my personal experience, my system runs much better and less hiccup with either swap=2xram or in this case i just rounded it up.

cheers ...

 

Linux - swap
quote:
"On memory aspects, Linux can manage today up to 64 GB in stable kernels. Linux takes the maximum from the memory you give to it, mainly by the constitution of a cache disk which improves greatly system performances. You may thus oversize the quantity of RAM installed, because it's preferable to a situation where the server would be forced to swap (which drop performances dramatically). The minimum RAM size provided on the NetServers (128 ou 256 MB) matches perfectly a normal use of a system, and doesn't need any particular addition. You have to take in account that there is no graphical environment used on production servers. Concerning the swap, under Linux, it comes in addition to the RAM to give the complete virtual memory available for the server. As a base rule, it's recommanded to give the same amount of swap space as the amount of RAM, to allow the system to put on disk nearly all the running processes in case of need. But the rule which exists for System V Unix (such as HP-UX) consisting of reserving twice the amount of RAM for swap isn't useful under Linux. You may note that Linux may swap certain inactive processes to free the maximum RAM possible. So having a system whose swap is partially used isn't necesseraly a proof of lack of memory, nor lack of performances."

full read at: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/HP-HOWTO/sizing.html

like I said, it is a matter of personal preference, whatever argument supports one's choice, is quite elligible

cheers ...

 

i have nothing but bad experience when installing windows last (XP or vista)
there is other boot manager out there (freeware) that can be used without linux grub and i heard that acronis 10 now offers a very good boot loader for multi-system, $$$

cheers ...

 

ubuntu installation would AUTOMATICALLY do all the needed steps (&partitions for u), that is why it is getting quite popular within the linux users

cheers ...

 

I am currently triple-booting as follows:

XP: ~53GB
Vista RC2: 25GB
Ubuntu 6.10: 15GB

I have a 100GB hard drive which comes out to be actually about 94GB, so that's where all the extra went. XP, Vista, and Dell's partition are all primary, and all the Linux partitions are extended off of a logical partition. And I would definitely recommend installing Ubuntu last. Windows doesn't play nice with Linux, and installing Vista last is definitely a bad idea. See, Vista doesn't use the BOOT.ini file like XP does, meaning you can't edit the bootloader. And it won't recognize Linux, just XP. Believe me, I know from experience. After I updated my Vista RC1 to RC2, I could no longer boot into SUSE when I had it installed. Just go ahead and install Ubuntu last. You'll be glad you did.

 

Thanks alot for that info, I have 2gb Ram so I guess I'll set swap at 1.5GB or just a little less then 2gb. That info just made me realize why it's called "swap".

Well I had XP & Ubuntu under GRUB. I installed Vista RC2 over Ubuntu, and Windows boot loader replaced GRUB.

Being that I'm doing a Fresh install, and loading in same order .........
Recovery disc XP media, Ubuntu edgy, and Vista last, I hope I get the same results.

What bad experience did you have?

I only had one bad experience, The first time I installed Ubuntu in a seperate partition. When I tried to boot windows under Grub, it would load and them the "mem32 not found" message came up. It would reset over & over. So I had to reinstall XP and everything worked dual booting.

As many times as I installed OS's Dual booting etc: That has only happen to me once. Hopefully it doesn't happen again.

I'm in the process of doing all this now.

 

That bad news,

I only had windows boot loader dual booting XP & Vista. Now I'm scared to load Vista last.

Thanks for the head up.

 

I'm currently quadriple-booting Slackware, XP, Vista, and OSX. LILO first, and it'll chain to the Darwin loader or the Windows loader, which will let me select between vista and xp. as an added bonus, this way, I can hibernate windows or linux and go to the other. I don't actually use OSX much.. just toyed with it a little bit.

edit: you can edit the vista bootloader. I forget how I did it precisely, found a guide online or something, but I changed it to load xp by default, and changed the menu names. Definately more involved than grub or lilo though. I'm not sure what kind of support it'd have for chaining to grub or lilo though.

 

Yea, I also bumped into that playing with settings in Vista. It was like a scroll down menu to select the default OS. And I remember it even had the option to control the seconds until boot default and a no auto boot option.

 

http://www.vistabootpro.org/

That makes editing the Vista bootloader really easy, but it still doesn't let you add Linux to the bootloader.

 

SUCCESS

Thanks everyone for the advice. I installed Linux last and using GRUB bootloader due to info that windows bootloader will not recognize linux.

I don't mind GRUB, but I hate when I update and a bunch of Options show. I don't want single core options anymore. Is there a way to config menu?


I used "Ext2IFS_1_10b" to have XP & Vista detect linux partition.



Heres a screenshot .... I use 2GB SWAP

 

right now on one box of mine, i have XP/FC6/Server 2k3 (still tinkering with server to make it a file server on a domain, etc..)

on my macbook, i got OSX, and i can use parallels for anything i please

pb,out.

 

check out /boot/grub/menu.lst

 

Make a copy of the menu.lst incase if you run into a boot issue. Then you can use a live CD to restore settings for an old kernel.

You can also use Gag for a boot loader. I would double check for Vista compatibility. I have not used it but heard it is nice.

 

Gag seems VERY interesting. I'm going to give it a try.

 

HEY, booger ........... Thanks Alot!!

Gag Bootloader is better than Windows & Grub bootloader Combined.

Gag is VERY easy to setup, and didn't cause any problems at all.

It lets you config alot.

Here is a screenshot ......

 

LIVEFRMNYC, no problem. I am glad I could help.

 

Just one Note with Gag Bootloader.

You got to make sure GRUB is not installed in the first HD sectors. I had to reinstall Linux and install GRUB in HD2 (same as my linux partition) instead of the default HD0.

I was lucky I haven't configured or updated anything on Ubuntu yet.

Otherwise it's all good.