how to tell where it booted from

[Mike Wright]

On 02/16/2016 08:33 AM, Tim wrote:
> Allegedly, on or about 15 February 2016, Mike Wright sent:
>> I have several large disks filled with experiments and multiboots...
>
> Once you sort this out, you want to plan how you do multiboots in the
> future.  Way back when I tried it, and even two is a pain, one good
> solution was to make your own custom boot partition, and all it did was
> let you select which partition to boot, it chainloaded the next one.

That sounds like the ideal approach for what I do.  Do you have an 
example of that you'd be willing to share?  I've never used chain 
loading and have only seen it referenced on this list.

> Whatever the /next/ one was, is a Fedora install with its own boot
> partition.  Whenever that installation does any kernel updates, it only
> touches files in its own /boot.
>
> Likewise, the alternative /next/ thing to boot, was a CentOS install,
> with its own boot partition.  And whenever it does any kernel updates,
> it only messes with file in its own /boot.
>
> I treated new installations as if they were a complete new hard drive to
> themselves, whether that's actually the case (and dedicating a whole
> drive to an OS tends to be easier), or whether I was halving a drive
> between two OSs, but still acting as if each OS was the only drive in
> the box.

I use a very similar approach.  Since a lot of my installs are intended 
to be run in a custom Xen environment they can't even single boot but I 
still need the kernels and initrds to copy elsewhere.  The problems 
arise when the installer does what it thinks is best for me and starts 
screwing with my LVM setup or goes scarfing through all my disks 
creating boot stanzas for installations that are incapable of standalone 
boots.  Gets really big and really ugly really fast.  I have had much 
better luck with Ubuntu installers.

>
> Other people eschew multibooting for running virtual machines.  In
> essence, you have a container that pretends its the hard drive for a
> machine.  Everything that instance does to itself, is all within that
> container.
>
> I've since reclaimed my sanity by not multibooting.  I use more than one
> computer.  Much more precise division between things that way.
>