How to triple-boot Fedora 15, Ubuntu 11.04 and Windows 7
Triple-booting windows 7 and two Linux distributions is a little bit more involved than dual-booting it with a distribution. You have to decide in what order to install the Linux distributions, and sometimes, the order you choose might not work. Such was the case with this attempt to triple boot it with Fedora 15 and Ubuntu 11.04.
Initially, I chose to install Fedora last, but discovered a major weakness in Anaconda, the Fedora system installer: It does not have a flexible means of configuring logical or primary partitions. And when you are using the MBR partitioning scheme, which limits the primary partitions that you can create to four, configuring partitions for a triple-boot operation becomes almost impossible.
So, the order of installation that made this attempt at triple-booting successful was: Windows 7, then Fedora 15, and finally Ubuntu 11.04. A few points to note here: The Desktop installer edition of Ubuntu 11.04 was used, not the Alternate Installer edition. Using the Alternate Installer edition would have resulted in many more steps and way too many screenshots. The Alternate Installer edition has its advantages: support for LVM, the Linux Logical Volume Manager, which is also the default on Fedora 15, and support for disk encryption. If you want the installation of Ubuntu 11.04 for this setup to be based on LVM, this guide should be of help.
When installing Windows and a Linux distribution, or two Linux distributions, on the same computer, you have a choice of making the Linux boot loader or the Windows boot manager be responsible for dual-booting. Each has its pros and cons. If you opt for the Windows 7 boot manager, you give up access to the security features provided by GRUB, the default boot loader on virtually all Linux distributions. If you opt for GRUB, however, Windows could overwrite aspects of the boot program, even during installation of a Service Pack, or during an upgrade or re-installation. That is a major headache.
I consider the option I chose for this tutorial the path of least headache. And that option is to make the Windows 7 boot manager be responsible for handling the dual-boot operation. So that anytime the computer is booted, you will be presented with these options. Keep in mind that if you change your mind about Windows 7 boot manager, you can always log into Ubuntu and install GRUB in the MBR, transfering control of the dual-boot process to it.
The next major decision you will have to make is whether you want to install Windows anew or use an existing installation of Windows. If the latter, which is the method used for this tutorial, boot into Windows 7 and launch the Disk Management tool. One way to access it is to type partitions in the menu’s search field. The objective here is to use this tool to shrink the main Windows 7 partition, the C drive, freeing up space that will be used to install Fedora 15 and Ubuntu 11.04. To start the operation, …
Right-click on the C drive, then select “Shrink Volume.”
Windows will suggest how much to shrink the partition by. If the shrinkable space is less than what you think you need for installing Fedora and Ubuntu, you may consider reinstalling Windows, and assign it a disk space manually. Otherwise, click Shrink.
This is the result of the surgical operation you just performed. The Unallocated space shown here will be used for installing Fedora 15 and Ubuntu 11.04. Exit the Disk Management tool, then boot the computer from the Fedora 15 installation CD or DVD.
When the installer starts, click until you get to the step shown in the image below. Before proceeding with the installation of Fedora, you should be aware, if you did not already, that the installation takes place in two phases. Most of the installation tasks take place in the first phase, while in the second phase, the user account and a few other minor tasks are taken care of. Also, because of the approach used here, the second phase will be possible only after you have added an entry for Fedora 15 in the Windows 7 boot menu.
The Fedora installer is a very advanced system installer. For this installation, you do not need the very advanced features, just the regular advanced ones. That means selecting Basic Storage Devices. Next.
These are the partitions as detected by Anaconda, the Fedora system installer. You can see the two windows 7 partitions. The available disk space will be split between Fedora 15 and Ubuntu 11.04. For Fedora 15, which will be the distribution to be installed first, I chose to use LVM. the Linux Logical Volume Manager, which is the default disk partitioning scheme. That entails creating a non-LVM partition to be mounted at /boot, then a Physical Volume, under which you configure three Logical Volumes. First the boot partition. Select the free space, then click Create.
If LVM is a new concept to you, please read one or two introductory articles about it here.
The boot partition is a Standard partition, so stick with the default, then click Create.
The properties you need to specify for the boot partition are the mount point (/boot), the file system type and the size. Ext4 is the default file system for all Fedora 15 partitions, and the default size is 500 MB. OK.
After the non-LVM boot partition has been configured, the next step is to initialize the disk space to be used for installing Fedora 15 for use by LVM. Initializing a disk or disk partition for use by LVM transforms it into a Physical Volume. To begin this phase, select the free space, then click Create.
Select “LVM Physical Volume,” then click Create.
For the Physical Volume I assigned half of the available disk space to it. The other half will be used for the installation of Ubuntu 11.04. Disk encryption is not configured for this tutorial, but if you want to encrypt the Fedora 15 installation, this is the step to enable it. Encrypting the Physical Volume effectively encrypts the Logical Volumes that will be configured under it. OK.
With the Physical Volume configured, the next phase involves creating a Volume Group and Logical Volumes. In LVM parlance, Logical Volumes are the equivalent of partitions. Select the Physical Volume, then click Create.
Make the right choice. Create.
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Does this work with Fedora 16? I tried on following the tutorials here but after I install Windows 7 and proceed with fedora 16, I am coming up with this error: ext4 Filesystem check failure on/dev/mapper/vgblackice-lvroot:
Operational error.
Errors like this usually mean there is a problem with the filesystem that will require user interaction to repair. Before restarting installation reboot to rescue mode or another system that allows you to repair the filesystem interactively. Restart installation after you have corrected the problems on the filesystem.
I’m relatively new to the whole linux thing, and don’t know how to reboot into Fadora 16, in rescue mode. Nor would I know what to do after I got to rescue mode.
I tried on having to run the livecd to repair the partition but no errors were found.
I’m running an asus k43u (amdc50 APU) Windows 7 64 bit and trying to install Fedora 16 32 bit for the second OS.
Hoping for your response.
I followed your guide to triple boot Win 7, Ubuntu & Linux Mint (installed in that order.) Thank you, btw!
I created a separate /boot partition for each of the Linux installs and added an entry for each in EasyBCD so that I can continue to use Windows bootloader.
Since EasyBCD “configures the device automatically” for each GRUB2 entry I’m hitting upon the following problem:
When I select Linux Mint from Windows bootloader it boots into Ubuntu instead. I assume this is due to it automatically booting from the first linux /boot partition it finds?
My question is how do I make windows bootloader point to my Linux Mint install instead of Ubuntu. If you can offer any advice I’d be very grateful!
Kind regards,
John
I do not have any dual-boot installation running at this time, but I think you could probably edit the entries in EasyBCD, so the Linux entries point to the right partitions. Did around EasyBCD and see what it can enable you to edit. Try the “Advanced” tab.
Usefull, indeed, but does all that apply to win/fedora dual boot, trying to add freebsd 8 to tripple boot, using windows boot loader?
I can’t find any article about triple booting win/fedora/freebsd.
I am now using win7/fedora15 dual boot and was hoping to add freebsd?
Is the configuration for partitioning the free space somewhat different from this here?
Also, will I get the full advantages of grub bootloader if I install it on MBR and disable windows updates? Thanks!
If you want to 3-boot win/fedora/freebsd, the suggested sequence should be win/freebsd/fedora. I have not tried it, but that should work better than FreeBSD at the end. The problem will be you will have to create FreeBSD partitions manually, as I do not think it will resize the Win partitions automatically.
If dual-booting with Windows on 1 HDD, it is always better to install GRUB some place other than the MBR, even if you disable Win updates. You might need to reinstall Win at some point in the future, for one reason or another. Also, some anti-virus programs have been know to write some files to win boot programs.
This may have little relevance with modern versions of these OSes, but I ran into some considerable trouble when I tried to set up a triple-boot between WinXP SP3, PC-BSD 1.5, and Fedora 7. I filed a bug report with bugzilla.redhat.com at the time, and after considerable head-scratching, I figured out that my troubles were caused by the order in which I installed the three OSes. [I tried looking for that bug report just now, but couldn't find it right away. Maybe because it's so old?]
Anyway, I first installed WinXP, then BSD, then F7. XP + BSD booted OK, but F7 wouldn’t boot beyond a text comment about “nash”, or thereabouts. IIRC, anaconda sets up the Linux kernel from the LiveCD as a Grub boot target with various CLI arguments to be passed to said kernel. Normally, this includes an argument that I think read ‘root /’; but since anaconda saw BSD’s / dir, it changed that Linux kernel argument to ‘root “LABEL=/”‘. I guess the kernel couldn’t recognize this, and couldn’t boot. Reinstalling F7 with a BSD slice and Linux partition reformat didn’t fix this, either. I wound up having to completely wipe the BSD slice and the Linux partitions before I got a successful reinstall. I did not, however, have to delete the Windows C: drive.
I found that the correct installation order to achieve this triple-boot is as follows:
Start with an ntfs partition at the beginning of the hdd, and plenty of space following it. Add a fat32 primary partition after that C: drive — for example, with WinXP’s Disk Management tool. That fat32 should be the size that you want to create as a BSD slice, but DO NOT install BSD yet. After setting up that fat32 volume, then go ahead and install Fedora. Anaconda will not see any other UNIX-like / dirs, and will set up an install as you direct it to, with standard kernel arguments. When configuring Grub, make sure to tell Grub that the fat32 volume is another boot target. Grub won’t do that automatically as the fat32 does not have a bootable filesystem yet. Only then, after installing F7, can you go back and install BSD. Select that fat32 for BSD’s slice, and when PC-BSD’s installer asks you about boot method, tell it to not set up a bootloader. There’s an option for PC-BSD to let an external bootloader take care of booting to BSD.
As I said at the top, this data is out-of-date, but I hope it still helps people now.
Thanks for contributing.
Very but very easy and useful tutorial.
thanks
Muchas gracias!!! el tutorial esta buenisimo, excelente! (thanks is a great tutorial)
Now how do we remove them? xD
This tutorial is amazing!
How to remove what?
How do we uninstall them. For example, how do we uninstall fedora. But I already found out ;P Thanks anyways
Glad you figured it out.
For those who might not know, to uninstall any of the Linux installations, just delete the associated partitions.
Wow, thank you for the fast response!
Also, I think they should do that only if they followed your amazing tutoral.
Because Before finding your tut, I installed fedora but it put it’s boot loader into the master boot record. So When I wanted to remove it because of it’s weird bootloader (Blue ugly stuff :/ my taste…) I deleted it’s partition and then couldn’t boot into windows nor ubuntu. Well thank gawd I was just testing this on an empty computer :O
So make sure Fedora’s bootloader isn’t in the master boot record before deleting it’s partition (If it’s in a partition just like in this tut than it’s safe) (Well I think..)
And thanks again for the amazing tutorial and fast responses ! & Have a great day!
The LVM manager I think it’s called Anaconda detecting my Extend partition(Fat32) as primary so I could’nt make enough primary as I already have 2primary partitions..That make me failed to thripple os..So now I back to install ubuntu..
An extended partition counts as a primary partition. If you have 3 primary partitions on Windows, you can install any number of Linux distributions on logical partitions. So, you can create the last partition as an extended partition and create all the Linux partitions as logical.
Linux will boot and run from logical partitions.
can we use the same partition for boot loader, as it like the two of linux sharing the partition for boot “/boot”? or one more thing is that can we use the same swap partition so we do’nt have to make many swap or boot partitions..
The same Swap? Yes. See this discussion.
Same /boot? I don’t think so. That’s one thing you want to keep separate. If you try it and it works for you, let us know, but knowing how this stuff works, I’ll caution against it.
Considering that the boot partition will have to be formatted during installation, I don’t even see how it can be done – during installation.
Hello. That looks like an excellent tutorial. I am going to do it as soon as I get my new system. There is one thing though, should I do anything differently assuming I want Fedora on the SSD?
i have used ubuntu grub for booting fedora, opensuse and ubuntu. install ubuntu at the last. it is very smart and adds all the os in the hard disk in probed os section autometically. ofcourse you have to install boot-repair
If you have to install boot-repair, it means Ubuntu’s installer is not very smart.
I have a computer with windows and five linux distros and an external transcend usb disk with 10 or more linux distros. For windows, I give them the first partition which I also set as primary. For linux, all partitions are logical. I use grub2 as the boot loader. So far so good. The only hurdles I have had is with distros that use lilo (slackware based) but that hurdle is only when installing them on the transcend external disk. On the local disk I chainload lilo boot loaders and it works but not so for my external usb disk.
I did it on an Eee PC with Fedora Grub 1 as the main bootloader, for multibooting several linux distros and windows.
How many partitions did you have on the Windows side? Where they primary or a mix of primary and logical partitions?