SUSE Linux Dual Booting

SUSE Product Topics SLED Install-Boot
1

Usually the SUSE Linux supports the dual booting of Windows and Linux. Can I make the dual booting of SUSE Linux desktop edition and SUSE Linux server edition?

2

Hi
Yes, but in your previous post you indicated UEFI, so there are a few
gotchas to watch out for. First get one or the other installed/booting,
then will explain what needs to be done.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (x86_64) Kernel 3.0.34-0.7-default
up 8 days 20:04, 2 users, load average: 0.53, 0.40, 0.36
CPU Intel i5 CPU M520@2.40GHz | Intel Arrandale GPU

3

I have two hard drives on the machine. The following is the intended setup for the dual booting.

[First HD for SUSE enterprise desktop]
/ (root)
/home
/swap

[Second HD SUSE for enterprise server]

/ (root)
/test1
/swap

Would like to ask you opinion or suggestions.

Do I really need two “/” directory for each?
Do I really need two “swap” directory for each?

If I use only one “/”, wouldn’t both the desktop and server versions be co-installed under it and that is not good?

Thanks

4

Hi
No you do need separte / partitions.

You would wind up with for example;

sda1 /boot/efi (100MB)
sda2 / (root1 SLED)
sda3 /home

sdb1 /  (root2 SLES)
sdb2 /test1
sdb3 swap (shared)

Note, I would download a parted magic iso and use gdisk to create gpt
partitions.

If you don’t have much ram you could also look at creating swap on both
drives and the RAID0 it.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (x86_64) Kernel 3.0.34-0.7-default
up 9 days 22:32, 2 users, load average: 0.38, 0.32, 0.28
CPU Intel i5 CPU M520@2.40GHz | Intel Arrandale GPU

5

Have a couple of questions:

  1. When installed the SUSE server, I created a /boot partition. When it comes to install the SUSE desktop, should I create it again? such as:

Format Partition: Ext3
Mount Point: /boot

Or, just leave it as it? (I would believe that formatting the /boot twice (once for server, another for desktop) will allow the /boot to be accessed by each at booting.)

  1. When installed the SUSE server, I created a /swap partition. When it comes to install the SUSE desktop, should I create it again (I intend to allow the server and the desktop to share the swap partition)? such as:

Format Partition: Swap
Mount Point: swap

Or, just leave it as it?

To achieve:

SERVER: /boot / /swap
DESKTOP: /boot / /swap

6

Hi
I would configure the two swap partitions as RAID0, then if needed it
will be faster…

What you need to do is also chainload in the second install grub
menu.lst as this will be the default. This will then mean you don’t
have to modify either grub’s menu.lst after a kernel upgrade.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (x86_64) Kernel 3.0.34-0.7-default
up 4 days 15:00, 3 users, load average: 0.63, 0.62, 0.52
CPU Intel i5 CPU M520@2.40GHz | Intel Arrandale GPU