Possible to install linux twice on the same computer?

[sprockkets]

I was looking to have both 8.1 and 8.2 SuSE versions on my computer at once, since it seems the 8.1 SPDIF works fine while in 8.2 it doesn't. But I like 8.2 since I have KDE 3.1.4 for Kopete. Anyway to do it?

 

[drag]

You can do it. Just dual boot, and have seperate partitions for each OS.

Well, it would probably be easier to figure out why SDIF out isn't working. I am familar with Audigy/Soundblaster 5.1 cards.

I beleive the SuSe uses ALSA sound drivers mostly, find out what driver they use.

OSS is open source sound, and is older. ALSA is advanced linux sound something-or-other. I would probably be easier to determine which drivers are being used. I beleive that all Alsa drivers are labled buy snd-drivername were as OSS drivers are just drivername.

For instance my card is a Audigy and uses emu10k1 drivers, so do soundblaster 5.1 and audigy 2 cards.

OSS module = emu10k1
alsa module = snd-emu10k1

You can find out what drivers are loaded by using lsmod command.

try in a console or x terminal as root (or use the su command if your a normal user):

lsmod | less

and see if you can spot your module for the sound card. Also look in the /etc/modules.conf file and see there.

Do a search for your card in google and see if you can't find the driver for it..

like

linux cardname module

then you can troubleshoot it. Sometimes to activate the SDIF out all you need to do is unmute something or make a special selection in your mixer program.

 

[sciencewhiz]

You can have both of them share the swap partition as well as /tmp, if you wish

 

[sprockkets]

So it simply knows that / is for one install and / is for another? Well if you all say so.

The SPDIF works fine in 8.1 and 8.2, but the 5.1 output of Mplayer from dvds only works in 8.1 for some reason. IIn 8.2 the receiver will light up that it got a 48khz signal but I get total silence. Xine for some reason doesn't have an option to enable ac52. Oddly enough, it will output digitally, but only the L and R channels.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: sprockkets
So it simply knows that / is for one install and / is for another? Well if you all say so.

It's nothing magical. When the kernel is loaded at boot-time, it's told where the root filesystem is, either explicitly on a boot command line or implicitly by the boot loader itself. The kernel reads the root filesystem, and that contains /etc/fstab which tells the system what the rest of partitions on the system do.

The SPDIF works fine in 8.1 and 8.2, but the 5.1 output of Mplayer from dvds only works in 8.1 for some reason. IIn 8.2 the receiver will light up that it got a 48khz signal but I get total silence. Xine for some reason doesn't have an option to enable ac52. Oddly enough, it will output digitally, but only the L and R channels.

Could be differences in the kernel or module versions. Does SuSE use ALSA for sound? Are there updates for the kernel and/or alsa modules available? 9.0 is out also - have you tried that?

 

[drag]

Usually the SPDIF stuff is turned off by default. Actaully by default Alsa the first time the modules get loaded all channels are muted or at zero volume.

So if Suse uses alsa by default (I think it is, educated guess) you just have to umute a special channel to get it digital out working. On 2 cards that I have experiance with: Audigy and Turtle Beach santa cruz, this was the case when using alsa.

OSS sometimes has special tools for spefic cards, and I am not familar with it.

Try this command line:

alsamixer

and see if there are some extra channels you don't see in a normal OSS/KDE/GNOME-based volume mixer program. (gnome has has a special purpose alsa mixer gui aviable, don't know about KDE, though.)

Then play around with it and see if you can get the reciever to pick up on the signal.

 

[Netopia]

I've had a half dozen or more versions plus BeOS and Win2k on a machine. Just you XOSL. It's the Extended Operating System Loader. It's free and allows you to have (if I remember) up to 31 bootable partitions on a hard drive! It hides other partitions from the one that's booting so that whatever system you're using thinks that it's the main one. You can even make entire clones of a partition and that way if you're messing around and hose an OS, you can just copy the cloned partition back over it and you're back to working again.

It's a great FREE tool for playing with multiple OSes. You'll have to dedicate an hour or two to learning how to use it, but once you do, you'll find it simple. It also goes hand-in-hand with Ranish Partition Manager, which will create all the partitions for various OSes for you and create the files systems (Fat, Ext2, Swap, Ext3 etc...) if you want.

You can find both here.

Joe

 

[sprockkets]

Yes, it uses Alsa. Good info on the boot loader.

 

[sprockkets]

Might as well add that trying both 8.1 and 8.2 with the default loader grub the install fails, maybe lilo works better, but will try xosl

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: sprockkets
Might as well add that trying both 8.1 and 8.2 with the default loader grub the install fails, maybe lilo works better, but will try xosl

Maybe because both OSes are trying to install their own grub into the MBR.

Try installing the bootload for the second install to that one's partition. Then editing the config of grub of the one you installed in the MBR to allow you to select which OS you want to boot into.

Although I still feel that it would be much easier to figure out why the SDIF isn't working in 8.2 then to try to run both of them.


What is the audio card your using?

 

[sprockkets]

I found the problem; with 8.1 I guess I had Alsa dev packages installed so mplayer used them, and now that I remember that's how I got hwac3 working. So I recompiled mplayer with alsa dev installed and that works. I did some more reading of the supported sound cards in their documentation, and found that OSS doesn't let AC3 work, only alsa.

Your solution seems good, in fact, it seems it should simply let you keep the current boot loader config and simply add another partition to the mix.

The audio card is good old Cmedia 8738. For me, the motherboard within my Shuttle XPC is good all around for Linux. The ethernet from Realtek works better than my nforce ethernet and VIA Rhine. The ITE chip works with lm_sensors. The board has a good 3 phase power supply. The sound has digital in and out, out of nvidia sound, a Hercules Fortissimo 7.1, a Chaintech ICEsemble 7.1 card (forget the model), this one works AC3 out and digital in, perhaps the ICEsemble card with the VIA codec (1613 or something like that, it's the vinyl audio one) will be supported later.

Wish it had a hardware based OpenGL acceleration. Don't really need the AGP slot in this computer.