Best practice for multiple version/OS boot?

[Pete Travis]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 11/24/2013 11:33 PM, Tim Landscheidt wrote:
> Hi,
>
> IIRC fedora-review suggested to test packages on all sup-
> ported Fedora releases.  So, with a larger hard disk, I want
> to install Fedora 19, 20 (soon) and Rawhide and throw in
> (recent) Debian and Ubuntu as well.  As my notebook doesn't
> support VMs, I'm interested in best practices for partition-
> ing and multi-boot setups.
>
> Currently I use a partition for /boot and another for an en-
> crypted LVM, so I only need to worry not to put private data
> in /boot, and I would like to keep such flexibility.
>
> I suppose I need to create a /boot partition for each ver-
> sion/OS.  I have had different Fedora versions share the
> same encrypted LVM without problems; I assume Debian and
> Ubuntu will do so as well, but I will keep some free space
> and partitions just in case.
>
> More contested seems to be the multi-boot setup.
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=872826 has a
> myriad of opinions on how it should be set up;
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Jlaska/Multiple_OS_Bootloader_Guide
> suggests "chainloader", and
>
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Multi_002dboot-manual-config.html
> recommends "configfile".  Of course there is also GRUB's OS
> prober.
>
> So what are Fedora developers /actually/ using?  Creating a
> separate GRUB partition and "chainloader"/"configfile"?
> Running OS prober in the "main" OS after each installation/
> kernel update?  Something else?  How often do the setups al-
> low one to shoot oneself in the foot, or are they (more or
> less) "foolproof"?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Tim
>

Enough people have asked this sort of question that Chris Roberts and I
started hacking on a Guide to address it. Suggestions, criticisms, or
contributions are equally welcome.

[1] https://git.fedorahosted.org/cgit/docs/multiboot-guide.git/

- -- 
- -- Pete Travis
 - Fedora Docs Project Leader
 - 'randomuser' on freenode
 - immanetize at fedoraproject.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.15 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJSk2y7AAoJEL1wZM0+jj2ZU3EIAJBMdQg49E1Gh1Nzdvk2bxdo
6RowLli9qfow9HiMjESNNN70VIZQDnBfZ0d6V+tquEHeBLXG/PLh7fLyYIdn3wNL
JdogdQX2K9BicH+bsCpYqabXxOGWWHH5ss+J6+fBYAwDxo/z5/j4+XXRSkDG9Kci
8RR7uCcfWpNNvODBzYIp34LFe7m1QAsFnwBxtMGVg7qzLJ2LEiOVcm0jkWxwa+wa
OTfDpnngPUTjpKK2exICRMQzrJoHFlv7bduaEaH7yp7YfD7DN5UR/wLku1kFHjbh
Ym7d3MItawLkAtURTh0NuR4hT+TTzxgTYgYXxi7vCuNdX4+Uq6V5xuO6YGdCtEs=
=Qvmd
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----