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Re: How to Triple boot - eCom, Win 7 & Linux

Cross-posted to 3 groups.

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> I would sure love some comments and ideas on this subject, especially 
> on their setup!
>
> http://www.os2notes.com/os2tripleboot.html
>

Two things:

First, that 100MiB partition that you were so keen to avoid is actually 
a good thing.  It's Windows 7 separating the boot and system volumes.  
An extension of the same idea, separating the system volume from the 
user volume, is why Linux wants those three partitions that you enquire 
about.  (The third is of course the swap partition.)

     
http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/boot-and-system-volumes.html

     http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd799232%28WS.10%29.aspx

Second, separating the boot and system volumes with Windows 7 allows you 
to make the Windows 7 system volume (which Microsoft likes to mis-name 
the "boot" volume, remember) a secondary partition, rather than a 
primary partition as you've been forced to have it.

In essence, your boot manager, whatever one you choose to employ, should 
end up presenting you with a menu of two primary partitions and one 
secondary partition:

     * the Windows 7 boot partition (the "system" partition in Microsoft 
Speak), which will in its turn display the Microsoft boot manager for 
loading one's choice of Windows kernel and sets of device drivers from 
the Windows 7 system (secondary) partition, or for running the various 
Microsoft recovery utilities

     * the Linux boot partition, which will start up LILO, GRUB, or 
whatever to load one's choice of Linux kernel and bootstrap to the Linux 
system (secondary) partition

     * the eComStation boot+system partition, which will start up 
eComStation from the combined boot+system (secondary) partition

In other words, your boot manager allows you to choose which boot volume 
to boot, and the boot volume's boot loaders/managers then select which 
exact configuration of the operating system to load with the respective 
system partitions.  They then can all access the user volumes (those 
that they commonly understand, at any rate).

In an ideal world, you'd be EFI of course, and life would be a lot more 
straightforward.  The functionality of your three boot volumes (apart 
from the extra recovery and maintenance stuff in the Windows 7 boot 
volume, and, alas, Microsoft's Boot Manager) would be subsumed by the 
*single* EFI System Partition where each operating system gets a 
subdirectory of its own for its boot files, you wouldn't need a third 
party boot manager in place of the pre-supplied boot manager that comes 
with EFI firmware, you wouldn't be worrying about the need to 
distinguish primary and secondary partitions because the EFI 
partitioning scheme doesn't impose such a distinction in the first 
place, you wouldn't be knocking at the door of the 2TiB limit of the MBR 
partitioning scheme since the EFI partitioning scheme's analogous limit 
is in the exabinarybytes, and you wouldn't be on the point of worrying 
about the 2TiB limit on anything bootstrapped the PC/AT firmware way 
from a Volume Boot Record because your operating systems wouldn't be 
using VBRs to bootstrap themselves any more.

     
http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/efi-boot-process.html

     
http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/bios-parameter-block.html#V3.4

You cannot even approach this ideal, though.  Unlike the people who 
triple-boot MacOS 10, Linux, and Windows 7, one of *your* chosen 
operating systems doesn't even understand the EFI partitioning scheme, 
let alone is capable of bootstrapping on EFI firmware.  So the ideal 
world is a *long* way away for you, even though your disc sizes 
themselves are picking up stones, tossing them from hand to hand, and 
giving meaningful looks at those 2TiB limits.  (-:

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Re: How to Triple boot - eCom, Win 7 & Linux Jonathan de Boyne Pollard <J.deBoynePollard-newsgroups@NTLWorld.COM> - 2011-04-12 10:42 +0100

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