How to install and boot 145 operating systems in a PC

The 145 systems are:-

3 Dos
5 Windows
137 Linux

I have also installed most of the PC-based BSD and Solaris together with a Darwin x86 too but these systems dislike to co-exist with a large number of other systems so I have to keep them off in another PC until I find a way to tackle the technical issues.

There are only 3 steps in this howto.

Step 1 – A simple hardware scheme

An operating system needs to reside in a home. That is a partition to me. I used 2x300Gb Pata disk and 2x200 Sata Disk to set up 152 partitions. I always put one operating system in one partition. As an extended partition of each hard disk has no storage of its own, one data-only partition is needed for my personal data, another data-only partition to house the common boot loader and one Swap partition is needed for all the Linux I ended up losing 7 partitions leaving 145 partitions to house the 145 operating systems.

Step 2 – A simple boot scheme

I put Grub in a data-only partition, created a boot menu to boot all the partitions before any of the operating systems was installed. When a partition is filled the system inside becomes bootable instantly. This scheme is dead simple, technically sound, perfectly applicable is every situation but can be viewed unconventional to some PC users. For those who know nothing about Grub it is just one of the two boot loaders commonly used in Linux. The other one is called Lilo possibly used by less than 40% of the Linux distros at the begining of 2007.

In a nutshell I use this Grub to boot up the boot loader of any of the 145 systems that I choose to use. Afterward it is the duty of the second boot loader that brings up its master.

Step 3 – A simple installation scheme

It is really simple. I just installed each system inside a single partition. For MS systems there is more work as I had to install each as a stand alone system so that it always boot to a “C” drive. I then moved the disks with the MS systems to the final position and edit Grub's menu file to boot it back to a “C” drive status.

My scheme depends every system having a boot loader inside its root partition. This is inherent in every MS systems and other operating systems that rely on booting from a bootable primary partition. For Linux it is an optional choice.


Hardware used

The PC is a self-assembled unit using the cheap components available. Nothing to write home about. Just average for an ordinary PC user say 5 years behind the latest technology as this is all I can afford.

Motherboard : Asrock 939NF4G-SATA2
CPU : AMD 939 64 +3200
Ram :1025Mb
Video : Onboard integrated NV44 graphics DX9.0 VGA
Hard disk 2x300Gb Maxtor 133/Mb/s Pata Diamond Max 10
2x200Gb 150Mb/s Sata-I Maxtor Diamond Maxline III
Sound card : SoundBlaster 5.1
Network card : Generic Realtek 8139 10/100 Entrnet
Keyboard : Generic PS/2 keyboard
Mouse : Generic PS/2 mouse

Essential tools

(1) A bootable Grub floppy or a bootable Grub CD.

(2) A Linux Live CD. Ideally one that has Grub inside.

(3) A Dos 6 or above bootable floppy with fdisk.exe inside

(4) A Win2k or XP installation CD

For the production of the Item (1) above and how to use the rest see the last link of my signature.


Partition tables

Here is the details of the partitioning scheme as output by “fdisk-l” Linux command.

如何在一台电脑上安装和引导145个操作系统

如何在一台电脑上安装和引导145个操作系统,酷！以下是我的安装步骤，有兴趣的可以试一下。

145个操作系统是：3个DOS；5个Windows；137个Linux。我也曾试图安装PC版的BSD和Solaris以及Darwin×86，但它们好像跟其他的操作系统不兼容。

如何操作主要有三步：

一，             硬件配置

每个操作系统需要自己的“住所”。我使用2×300Gb Pata硬盘和2×200Sata 硬盘来设立152个分区。一个操作系统对应一个分区，还有一个存放我个人数据的纯数据区，一个存放boot loader的纯数据区，还为所有的Linux操作系统准备一个Swap分区。

二，             引导配置

在一个纯数据分区中放入Grub，在任一操作系统安装之前创建一个引导菜单。当分区已满时，系统即可启动。这一步从技术上来所很简单，只是可能不同于一些PC用户的习惯。对Grub一窍不通的人，它只是Linux中使用的两个boot loader之一（另一个是Lilo）。

三，             安装配置

也很简单——在每个分区中安装每个操作系统。对于微软的操作系统，要更费劲些，因为我必须把每个作为独立的操作系统来安装，因为它总是导入“C”盘。所以我将装有MS 系统的硬盘移到最后，编辑Grub的菜单引导到“C”盘状态。

我使用的电脑配置如下：

主板：Asrock 939NF4G-SATA2

CPU：AMD 939 64 +3200

内存：1025Mb

显卡：Onboard integrated NV44 graphics DX9.0 VGA

硬盘：2x300Gb Maxtor 133/Mb/s Pata Diamond Max 10

2x200Gb 150Mb/s Sata-I Maxtor Diamond Maxline III

声卡：SoundBlaster 5.1

网卡：Generic Realtek 8139 10/100 Entrnet

键盘：Generic PS/2 keyboard

鼠标：Generic PS/2 mouse

需要的工具

1，  可导入的Grub CD或Grub软盘

2，  一张Linux Live CD（内置Grub就更好了）

3，  一个Dos 6或者内置fdisk.exe的可导入软盘

4，  一个Win2k或者XP 安装CD

最后在Linux命令行中输入“fdisk-1”！即可看到分区规划。