I would like to try to set up a computer so that it has multiple Linux installs all in the same filesystem. For example, the filesytem would have 3 folders: /Ubuntu_Precise, /Ubuntu_Oneiric, and /Ubuntu_Natty. (I know you can do this with BTRFS and subvolumes, but I would like to use EXT4 for speed).I once set up multiple installs of different distros using BTRFS, and from getting that working, I know Grub does just fine with booting the vmlinuz and initrd image from 'nonstandard' paths. But when I was doing the BTRFS thing, there was the rootflags=subvol=@<subvolume_name> that told the kernel to mount that subvolume as / in the filesystem. Is there any argument that you could pass the kernel that would make it bind mount a subfolder in a partition as / and then boot?I think for the other parts, I'm fairly close. I know how to specific a bind mount in /etc/fstab. Also, from when I set up my system with multiple linux installs in BTRFS subvolumes, I'm used to installing a distro in a VM and then migrating it using rsync, so I'm not too worried about what I would need to do to get the right configuration, I'm just trying to find out what the right configuration would be. Once I know that, I should be able to do the migration into the subfolders and file editing easily enough.I already know about virtualization and partitions, but that's not what I'm looking for. The target computer does not have enough power to do virtualization, and partitions do not share free space. I'm looking to set up a system that dual/triple/quad/etc boots linux distros, but that does it with one filesystem, so that there is no case of I have free space, but it's in the wrong partition!'If anyone has suggestions how to edit my question or its title to be clearer, I'm all ears.
Boot Linux system from a subdirectory on a partition?
linux;filesystems;boot;chroot