PC-BSD and Mint on one hard drive - PC-BSD Forums

vinoman · #1 02-23-2010, 03:19 AM

I'm thinking of installing PC-BSD 8 on a hard drive with Mint 8 already installed.

What is the best way to do this?

Will the new PC-BSD installer see the Mint partition and allow me to select or create a partition during the installation?

Fatmice · #2 02-23-2010, 12:57 PM

I do not know what Mint8 is. Would you care to elaborate?

vinoman · #3 02-23-2010, 01:05 PM

Originally Posted by Fatmice

I do not know what Mint8 is. Would you care to elaborate?

Linux Mint is a distro. The one I use the most for new Linux users. I works very well. It's based on Ubuntu Linux.
www.linuxmint.com

Fatmice · #4 02-23-2010, 02:12 PM

Okay, I see. Then there is no reason why PCBSD can't co-habitate.

1/ Do you use a boot loader? LILO? GRUB? Something else?
2/ If you do, then during install do not install the pcbsd boot loader
3/ During installation you will be able to select the empty space (if there is any) to make a new slice for PCBSD to live in.

vinoman · #5 02-23-2010, 02:22 PM

So I should use gparted and create a partition first. then since I use grub for Mint, that should stay the same the not use the pcbsd bootloader. I guess I won't know if both are listed in grub until pcbsd is installed. In the past, I've used ubuntu installers and they have been very good at seeing other distros and listing them on the bootloader. or you have to edit and source.list after its done.

is there a link to a page that explains this in more detail?

Fatmice · #6 02-23-2010, 02:56 PM

I would advise you to set aside space first. Use whatever tool you are comfortable with like gparted.

Since you use GRUB, I would go to GRUB documentation on how to add another entry to it to allow booting of PCBSD. There are several versions of GRUB floating around.

Manual for GRUB v. 0.97

vinoman · #7 02-23-2010, 03:47 PM

that's what I'll do. Right now parted magic is creating a 96gb partition for PCBSD. I didn't know what file system to make it, so I left it unformatted and PCBSD can format it the way it should be.

I wrote to the Mint & Ubuntu forum for the listing PCBSD should be on the grub bootloader. I'll see what happens. I don't have anything of importance on the hdd so if I blow it, I'll start over.