The current partitioning as shown in Gnome Disks is:
/dev/sda1 Linux Bootable 500mb
/dev/sda2 Linux LUKS Encryption 478gb (this is LVM)
Free Space 21gb
In /dev/sda2, there is /, swap and /home.
I want to install another distribution on the 21gb free space. It will share swap and home partitions with the current installation.
I will mount /home and swap as respective mountpoints and not format them. I will create / for the new distribution.
The question is what do I do with /boot? Do I use the existing one or a new one?
Also, do I need to install GRUB again? Where?
Best Answer
Yes, you can share the
/boot
partition with multiple distributions, but it's not trivial. In order to avoid possible conflicts I'd only use ONE of them (typically the one with the most recent/up2date GRUB version) to "own"/configure/manage it. To prevent accidental damage I'm even mounting it readonly in the "non-owner" distributions (or not mounting it at all).It may be a bit tricky to install the subsequent distributions without affecting the previous ones. Especially if handing over the
/boot
partition "ownership" to the newer installation. Personally I prefer to NOT use a separate/boot
partition for the newer installation (temporarily making its/
partition the bootable one) and manually "merging" it's/boot
directory info into the shared/boot
partition scheme after the installation. Updating a "non-owner" distribution also requires baby-sitting.Always make backups copies of the
/boot
directories and the '/boot' partition along the way and have a bootable media ready for recovering the GRUB setup if something goes wrong.Another approach is simply to not have separate
/boot
partitions for newer installation and simply chainload their/
partitions (where their/boot
directories reside) into the current GRUB scheme just like (older) Windows installations.Be careful for possible issues with sharing the
swap
and/home
partitions, here would be some Q&As you may want to go through for things to consider: