Dual Booting OpenSUSE/Ubuntu with same /home

[Jeff91]

Hey There,

Currently I am running Ubuntu 9.04 on my laptop and I am interested in giving OpenSUSE a go - how ever I would like to set it up so I can multiboot with Ubuntu while sharing a /home partition between the two. I found this guide: Dual boot with two Linux, using the same home directory | Linux Operating System - Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo, Arch

That describes how to do what I am looking to do only with different distros. Would this be hard to do with Ubuntu/OpenSUSE? Any input would be lovely.

Thanks,
~Jeff

[malcolmlewis]

Hey There,

Currently I am running Ubuntu 9.04 on my laptop and I am interested in
giving OpenSUSE a go - how ever I would like to set it up so I can
multiboot with Ubuntu while sharing a /home partition between the two. I
found this guide: 'Dual boot with two Linux, using the same home
directory | Linux Operating System - Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo,
Arch' (http://tinyurl.com/mftyyf)

That describes how to do what I am looking to do only with different
distros. Would this be hard to do with Ubuntu/OpenSUSE? Any input would
be lovely.

Thanks,
~Jeff

Hi
I have done it a little different and have a /data partition instead
and just create a /boot and / then create softlinks to various common
items eg ~/.profile ~/.bashrc ~/bin ~/Documents then let the distro/DE
create it's own environment to use.

Not sure how you would get on running ubuntu with openSUSE Gnome....

--
Cheers Malcolm ��� (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 5 (i586) Kernel 2.6.31-rc6-3-desktop
up 1 day 5:44, 2 users, load average: 0.18, 0.08, 0.06
ASUS eeePC 1000HE ATOM N280 1.66GHz | GPU Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME

[Confuseling]

I described a similar set up to what Malcolm Lewis is talking about in this thread.

Dualbooting SuSe and Ubuntu? - openSUSE Forums

You could use the same home, but the settings would 'contaminate' one another, unless you use different user names for each distro, which rather defeats the point.

[swerdna]

I'd (in gnome) make a zipped file: yourname.tar.gz of all your /home/yourname files, in case it goes pear shaped, and store that somewhere safe. You can make the tar.gz in Nautilus with R-click --> make archive.

I say this only because:

• Ubuntu makes files and directories with user=yourname, group=yourname (and uid=1000,gid=1000)
• Suse makes files and directories with user=yourname, group=users (und uid=1000,gid=100)

So it will be as well to have a backup of the stuff in /home in case the two ways of filing don't mix too well. So easy to restore.

[Jeff91]

Could you elaborate how settings exactly "contaminate" each other? I might be willing to deal with this.

Here is another question - what if I format the Ubuntu / partition all together and replace it with OpenSUSE? Could I still use my old /home from Ubuntu (with just OpenSUSE installed) or would it still cause corruption?

~Jeff

[Confuseling]

Almost impossible to speculate exactly what might happen - that's the point.

If you have a program 'foo' in both distros, and 'foo' keeps its configuration in ~/.foo, then both distros will fight over the settings. This is fine, if they agree about what the settings should be. If they don't, you might not notice. Or your desktop might melt...

[ETA: I guess the issue is, it's probably just not worth the hassle. You might be chasing phantom bugs six months from now, caused by this. Easier to just use symlinks, either with a separate data partition as Malcolm suggested, or using one main home partition as in the link I gave - the effect is essentially the same.]