dual boot

[walley40 0]

I have installed two linux OSes, Mandriva LE and SuSe10 pro, and cannot boot to either. I did not make any alterations to the default install. I first installed Mandriva and when installing SuSe, without any but the default configurations,the first partition was recognised. When booting, however, and choosing the first hd1 to upload Mandriva I received an error --Magic numbers failed? I decided to re-install Mandriva and the partition table accordingly showed the partition where SuSe was installed and then formatted the drive hd1 where the failed Mandriva OS was installed in order to make a clean installation. But when I rebooted after the completed installation of SuSe, I received an error INIT waiting for single user? How do I configure a dual boot from this situation?

Thanks

[danleff 0]

One of the more common problems folks run into is to keep trying to install different Linux distros over each other.

 

I'm having a hard time sorting out what you did on each install attempt, but it sounds like the distros are not formatting the drive partitions correctly on each attempt to install.

 

If you want to dual boot, I have found that different distros do not always like how the previous one set up partitions.

 

What I would do is get a copy of Knoppix and format your partitions ahead of time with the partitioning utility included, qtparted. Or better yet, get a copy of PartitionMagic and do the same. Make three partitions, one for Mandrake, one for Suse and a small swap partition.

 

There are also free tools to do the formatting, such as 7 Tools Partition Manager.

 

Then, when you do the installations, tell the installer of the distro to do the install on each partition, one for Mandriva and one for Suse. They will find the formatted swap space fine.

 

Each distrro should find the previous one and make an entry in Grub or Lilo to dual boot.

 

Which bootloader are you using and are you installing Grub or lilo to the master boot record?

 

Giving us an idea what system that you are attempting to do these installations on will also help, to determine if you need to pass any specific commands at install to suite your hardware.

 

A specific one that comes to mind, are sata drives.

 

Some systems, like Dells and Gateways, give some headaches, as they have a small hidden partition at the beginning of the drive that is really hda1.

 

Post some system specs and this will help us troubleshoot more effectively.