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286
 
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I have lots of old ATA hardrives left over from various computer builds, upgrades etc and would like to build a system that could multi boot several Linux Distros. Is this possible and is there a limit to the number you could boot using separate hard drives for each distro?
I use to use something called System Commander to multi-boot, but I am not sure if its still available, or if there is anything similar?
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Pentium
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rickonnye (26/09/2008)
I have lots of old ATA hardrives left over from various computer builds, upgrades etc and would like to build a system that could multi boot several Linux Distros. Is this possible and is there a limit to the number you could boot using separate hard drives for each distro?
I use to use something called System Commander to multi-boot, but I am not sure if its still available, or if there is anything similar?
WOW, this IS a highly productive time for new forum ideas, you have hit on something close to my heart, multi-boot of alternative distros in as 'real' a way as possible, reducing some 'virtual' limitations. So far I have been using the automatic across-all-drives search of main distro-embedded GRUB installeds on a master drive to generate a selection menu, so far using Ubuntu or its Mint derivatives, but have become conscious of some limitations in doing so.
Checking out http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Boot-Manager-Disk/, I have concluded that the 'one-man-band' and free Spanish GAG probably offers the best bet, with its 'Spanglish' much improved over that of earlier versions, but I'd like to know what you think. 
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286
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There might be a limit on number of hard disk drives your motherboard can handle.
  
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Pentium
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darrelljon (26/09/2008)
There might be a limit on number of hard disk drives your motherboard can handle.
Usually two drives per IDE controller, so the trick could be finding a cheap and Linux compatible PCI/dual IDE controller card, allowing four drives per card ? 
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Still Learning @63 and Trying to Keep it Simple
........... Shared.Knowledge.Better.than.Lost.Or.Concealed Knowledge ....
[A] rig..ASUS-EN8500GT SATA-320+80GB G31MX-S2 2.6GHz E2160 2G
[B] rig..384M_XFX8800GS SATA-320+500GB G31MX-S2 2.9GHz E4600 2G
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http://tinyurl.com/MP3-Creation-with-the-Heron
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286
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AFAIK, the Grub bootloader can handle up to 150 different boot options.
Quite how complicated it would be to implement... I have no idea!
This thread is quite old now, but might have some useful information.
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Pentium
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Hi Rickonnye,
Given the use of multiple hard drives and the hard drive limitations regarding the number of partitions supported by the various kernels, it should in theory be possible to create an almost unlimited number of Linux distro installs. You would hit hardware limitations before software ones, e.g. number of Sata/IDE headers on the Mobo, number of PCI/PCIE Sata/IDE expansion cards you could fit, Number of USB headers etc. before the Mobo/PSU died a death.
IMHO all that would be required would be to have a line in grub similar to the 'chainloader +1' typically used for booting windows partitions but aimed at another hard drive with another GRUB installation covering yet another range of installed Linux Distros.
That way you'd have possibly 63 partitions per hard drive and a Grub installed every 2nd hard drive covering 125 Distros ((63 partitions per disk)x2 less one swap partition).
True the booting would take some time as you worked your way through the nested 'GRUB' menus.
When I was multi-booting windows 98,ME,2K and XP alongside Fedora, Mandriva, Suse and Debian, plus a few others on one 40GB hard drive, the thing that I soon discovered was that some Linux Distributions will automatically see other Linux distributions, and other Distributions would ignore them so that the CLI had to be resorted to in editing Grub. So the most practical way is to not install Grub into HDA1 for every install but to install it in the general purpose /Root partition that the Distro is going into.
You could try creating one /Home partition for all the Distros to use, but be aware that the Redhat/Mandriva based Distros input different identifying codes (for want of a better description) into the filesystem than the Debian based ones, so a separate /Home might not be fully usable by all installed Distros.
Mad Malc
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386
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I've often thought of multi-booting different distros too, but thinking about it is as far as i've got. I would assume that you'd just need to create a partition for each distro and install them onto said partition without overwriting the GRUB. Then run the usual commands to restore the GRUB and i assume it would automatically find all the distros/partitions and create a fresh GRUB, thus making everything bootable.
Seems good in theory but i can't say i've had the time to try it yet.
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Pentium
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For a couple of years, I have been using the GRUB automatic search and menu creation of Ubuntu versions to expedite just such multi Operating System boot systems, with Windows OSs needing their own dedicated primary, bootable partitions.
Note that Grenville's link is to 2004-vintage information. Since then, distributions, starting with Ubuntu 7.10 and Mint4, have incorporated NTFS3g capabilities so that partition visibility has not been limited to old Linux ext2, newer ext3 or to FAT16 or FAT32 partitions.
Nowadays, distros based on the 2.6-series kernel can usually 'see all', especially the ultra mini (45MB) utilities distro known as PartEdMagic 3.0 
With forum member advice helping in its construction, my [A] rig has demonstrated XP, Vista Home Premium and several different Linux distro capabilities, with Linux distro changes often being via extremely easy to use SelfImage for distro 'snap-shotting' and restoration, rather than many partitions installation. 
As advised by Mad Malc, non-Debian, RedHat Package Manager (RPM) distros can use GRUB in a subtly different way, complicating matters, so the actual choice of Master GRUB distro for overall control is likely to be important. Meanwhile, prompted by rickonnye's Opening Post, I have ordered an http://tinyurl.com/2epg4r card in order to look at adding old IDE PATA drives to my new [X] rig's multi USB, multi SATA capabilities.
If this thread continues, I'll let you know how I get on. 
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Still Learning @63 and Trying to Keep it Simple
........... Shared.Knowledge.Better.than.Lost.Or.Concealed Knowledge ....
[A] rig..ASUS-EN8500GT SATA-320+80GB G31MX-S2 2.6GHz E2160 2G
[B] rig..384M_XFX8800GS SATA-320+500GB G31MX-S2 2.9GHz E4600 2G
32-bit Mint4, Mint6rc1, WinXP & Vista Home Premium.
http://tinyurl.com/MP3-Creation-with-the-Heron
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