Booting multiple Linux distros

Some of you may use dual booting system to boot Linux and Windows on the same computer. However there are some people who would like to have more than one Linux distro in their pcs and want them to be choosed during system bootup. For the above purpose you may use Grub installer come as default boot manager with many distros. Once you have grub as your default boot loader all you have to do it edit the menu.lst according to your wish. You can find the menu.lst in /boot/grub/ folder.

Example.

title Windows XP
root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1


title SuSE Linux 91
kernel (hd1,4)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdb5 vga=0x317 splash=silent desktop resume=/dev/hda6 showopts
initrd (hd1,4)/boot/initrd


title SuSE Linux 91 Failsafe
kernel (hd1,4)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdb5 showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off vga=normal noresume nosmp noapic maxcpus=0 3
initrd (hd1,4)/boot/initrd


title SuSE Linux 90
kernel (hd0,6)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda7 vga=0x317 splash=silent desktop hdc=ide-scsi hdclun=0 hdg=ide-scsi hdglun=0 showopts
initrd (hd0,6)/boot/initrd


title SuSE Linux 90 Failsafe
kernel (hd0,6)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda7 showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off vga=normal nosmp noapic maxcpus=0 3
initrd (hd0,6)/boot/initrd


title Ubuntu
root (hd0,7)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.8.1-3-386 root=/dev/hda8 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.8.1-3-386
savedefault
boot

title Ubuntu(recovery mode)
root (hd0,7)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.8.1-3-386 root=/dev/hda8 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.8.1-3-386
savedefault
boot

title Debian
root (hd1,6)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.27-1-386 root=/dev/hdb7 ro
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.4.27-1-386
savedefault
boot

title Debian(recovery mode)
root (hd1,6)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.27-1-386 root=/dev/hdb7 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.4.27-1-386
savedefault
boot

Lets take one entry and analyse it in detail.
title Ubuntu #Here you can name the corresponding distro anyway you like#
root (hd0,7) #This indicates that the root partition of the corresponding system is located in the first harddrive-hd0(second harddrive would be hd1)#
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.8.1-3-386 root=/dev/hda8 ro quiet splash #Here you should specify the path to the kernel.#
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.8.1-3-386 # Finally you should also specify the path to the image file which will appear during booting. In most cases both the kernel and the image are located in the same directory(/boot/)

To edit your menu.lst file you can follow the following instruction(work under KDE environment).
Press "Alt + F2".
Type "kdesu gedit".
Then Open the "menu.lst" file.
Edit the entries according to your sytem.
Save the file and close qedit.
Reboot


PLEASE MAKE SURE TO KEEP A BACKUP OF MENU.LST

Have fun!