I was wondering if it is possible to have one /boot partition for both distributions. Is it possible at all? I compared both /boot partitions and all the files slightly differ from each other. I know that the bootloader would have to point to exact initrd-blablabla instead of the symlink also as to vmlinuz. Has anyone tried that?
BUMP BUMPIDY DO
BenderBendingRodriguez wrote:
>> Has anyone tried that?
> BUMP BUMPIDY DO
consider for a moment, the distinct and very high probability that
every person in this fora who has tried it answered your first
post in that ten minute interval between it and your bump…
personally, i think it highly unlikely to work, but suggest since you
thought it up and no one else has ever tried it that you DO, and
report back on your findings…
if it works perhaps you can patent it and sell it to M$… 
–
brassy
Well i bumped it so that everyone can see this
Well, i backed up my old /boot from 11.2, copied all the necessary stuff to my 11.1 /boot, adjusted menu.lst to point to exact initrd and not just the symlink and i’ll report in a minute if it worked rotfl!
I see no reason why it can’t be made to work. If it doesn’t it’s your fault. 
Oh, if you are using ext4 in 11.2, then don’t use ext4 for /boot, otherwise you will need a patched GRUB (I don’t know if the 11.2 GRUB has been patched).
Yes it does support it but 11.1 doesn’t, it supports ext4dev. Not to mention you need more than menu.lst doing…(EDIT correction or may need to do more with fstab.)
I like to stick with ext2.
I succesfully booted to every distribution i got from my new /boot partition lol!
11.1 booted fine
11.2 booted fine
Windows Vista booted fine (don’t kick me, it’s just for some software that doesn’t work on wine :’()
Since there is one menu.lst i can read and adjust it from every distribution and in every distro it will look the same lol!
P.S. For me menu.lst is the only thing to do since i got my root partitions on an LVM. I only adjusted menu.lst so that it to the same /boot partition and everything is fine.
P.S.2 I guess it’s the only thing to care about, menu.lst since you can alwasy adjust where is the root partition.
My menu.lst looks like this
Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Mon Jul 27 14:02:27 CEST 2009
default 0
timeout 4
gfxmenu (hd1,1)/message
##YaST - activate
title openSUSE 11.2
root (hd1,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.30.2-1-desktop root=/dev/system/ROOT_11.2 splash=silent vga=0x365
initrd /initrd-2.6.30.2-1-desktop
###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE 11.1
root (hd1,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.27.25-0.1-default root=/dev/system/ROOT_11.1 splash=silent vga=0x365
initrd /initrd-2.6.27.25-0.1-default
title Windows Vista SP2 x64
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
Also there is one bonus of having one more primary partition (or extended if you haven’t got one) to spare for a MBR type partitions
Now out of curiosity i installed kernel-default to see if it will get adjusted properly. And it did!! It is not pointing to the symlinks, but to the kernel-default. So that is one great thing 
NO MORE multiple /boot partitions for me
Hail to linux for allowing us to do such great things lol!
P.S. What do you guys think of making a HowTo for that?
Well yes we all agree that Linux is great and all that but strictly speaking it’s GRUB that has the flexibility to do all that. There’s is no surprise in this, people who boot multiple OSes with one GRUB know this. /boot is just a place to deposit boot images. Before the kernel is loaded there is no Linux running, it’s GRUB. (Despite what some cenocephalic recalcitrants mutter about GRUB having “a little bit of Linux”.)
One fly in the ointment is that the kernel installer scripts in some Linux distros might be a bit too zealous to clean up /boot when a new kernel is installed. It might think a kernel image from another distro is an older version and delete it without warning.
You are right
I already have a title for my HowTo
One /boot to rule them all lol!lol!lol!