Booting@running numerous distros from an ext SSD

[Gio.Neve]

Hey everyone!

I just signed up after reading some posts and saying to myself, I think I found the right place for all things Linux. You seem like a very knowledgeable and friendly bunch

Here is my quandary: I have some experience with Linux but haven't touched it for quite some time so I have lots of catching up to do. At the moment I want to setup an external SSD drive (250 gigs) to serve as my main linux drive from which I want to play with various distros to eventually settle on a server, desktop, lite and utility distribution; and maybe a fifth install just for testing future distros.

I have read tons of threads online about making multi-boot USB (or external SSD, HHD) drives, and they do exactly what they set out to do, ie, make a multi-boot drive that launches any one of many bootable ISO's. But that is not what I want to do. My goal is to have multiple, running, installations on the same external drive. Installations that I can continue to work on from day to day without losing anything when I shut down as would happen when shutting down an ISO 'trial' boot.

What I want to do is boot my computer and select the external drive as my boot device. When the drive boots it presents the various distros I can boot up, without in any way affecting the main computer drive.

I know this involves a more complex boot loader/manager process and a partition for each distro. I understand there can be some shared partitions for /storage /media and probably a single swap partition, but to avoid any potential issues each distro would have its own partition for everything else.

Any insight as to how I should approach this project would be immensely appreciated. I have read a little about UEFI and rEFInd. The computer is an Asus Vivobook M3500QC running Windows 11, which I do not want to risk messing up, hence a dedicated external SSD for Linux.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts.

 

[wizardfromoz]

G'day from DownUnder @Gio.Neve and welcome to linux.org

1. Is the external SSD M2. or NVMe?
2. With the Windows 11 drive if that is SSD, same question, or if SATA, how much space left outside of Windows (I am thinking of storage)?
3. Do you have any Linux Distros in mind at this point?

There will likely be more questions.

4. I am guessing the Windows drive will be in UEFI-GPT format, with an ESP (EFI System Partition) formatted to FAT32, of a size perhaps 100 MB to 512 MB, is that so? If you are not sure, Windows Disk Management will reveal.

Rod Smith's rEFInd is a good product as long as you don't have as many distros as I (see the link in my signature). Too much scrolling and identifying distros, so I prefer the vertical structure Grub 2 provides in a menu.

So let's start with answers to those 4 questions and we can work from there.

My timezone is from east coast Australia, Queensland.

Cheers

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz

 

[Gio.Neve]

Hey Chris, thanks for the quick response. Here are the answers too your questions:

1. External target drive for my Linux playground is an older 850 EVO from Samsung, 2.5 inch form factor using older SATA interface at 6gb.

2. This is an M.2 form factor NVMe drive. (512gb). As for the thought of using it for storage I want to keep this exclusively for windows use. Stability is important for my main work computer.

3. As a day to day desktop I am looking at Mint; for a server distro Debian or CentOS (worked with this for years running cPanel); to explore and up my game on security/privacy issues, Kodachi and Qubes are both candidates; i also looking for a lite distro to play with for future home projects (RasPi); a good utility distro, like a UBCD on steroids; and a final space for exploring new distros. So I envision running about 6 distros on the same drive. Sounds ambitious I know but I'm ready to dive in. If you have thoughts or suggestions on any of these I'm all ears.

4. Yup, the size is 260 meg.

Before we move on let me just tell you how far I got. I was able to configure the target drive as follows (disk 3): Example Partition Layout There is a 1 gig EFI partition, 4x40gig, 1x70gig and a final 10gig for a shared swap and/or storage. I successfully installed mint (via a USB stick) on the 70gig partition and was able to boot to it. The thing is it keeps booting from the EFI partition on my windows drive even though I select the external drive to boot from in the bios. I am wondering if I can use 2 different EFI partitions on the same machine.

As a side note the space allocation per distro will be given more thought, the above is just a rough guide for now.

Cheers!

 

[Gio.Neve]

Just a heads up before you spend more time on this wizard, I am making good progress. 2 installations off the same external drive are working just fine. I think the problem I had was not realizing there can only be one EFI partition for the system. The partition is a bit messy right now but learning how to clean it up as I go along. Tomorrow I start from scratch to see if I can streamline the process. I'll keep you posted.

 

[wizardfromoz]

Phew glad I refreshed the page.

1.

2 installations off the same external drive are working just fine.

Let us know what they are when you get time.

2. Did that generate a Grub Menu that shows the distros (Windows will likely appear as Windows Boot Manager)?

I think the problem I had was not realizing there can only be one EFI partition for the system.

No, you can have more, including one or more on the same drive or one for each drive, but I can tell you about that later.

If you get the time, give us a revised picture at SnipBoard, or you can use GParted (GNOME Partition Editor) to do likewise - GParted may need installing depending on what you have right now.

Off to get a carton of beer and I'll talk with you on your tomorrow.

BTW we have a think tank the size of an asteroid full of brain boxes here, so if you get other input in the meantime, certainly entertain what they have to say.

BTW2 If you have already put it on that's OK but you don't likely need a swap partition - I don't use 'em and I run 80 Linux on 16 GB of RAM. More on that later.

Cheers

Wizard