Creating a Multi-Boot Disk for Machines With AMD Opteron Processors

Overview

Sun Microsystems Inc.'s new 64-bit Opteron machines can be configured to run the Solaris Operating System (x86 Platform Edition) and several distributions of Linux, all from a single internal disk drive. This is made possible by correctly partitioning the disk drive at the time of the first OS installation, to allow space for two or more different operating systems. When all of the operating systems are properly installed, the user can choose which one to run from the Linux GRUB Boot Loader, as the machine is being booted. This paper presents step-by-step procedures for loading the Solaris 10 OS on x86 platforms, and one or two 64-bit Linux operating systems, on machines based on 64-bit AMD Opteron processors.