Change home partition

[bonedriven]

I am doing tri-booting on my laptop: Win 8, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu.

However after about 1 week of use of OpenSUSE and Ubuntu, today I notice that OpenSUSE has been using the /home partition I gave it to Ubuntu. While I have given OpenSUSE and Ubuntu two different partitions as home partition, but I don't remember when I did it wrong and the fact is that they have been sharing one /home partition. And I use the same user name too ! So I guess it is definitely messed up?!

Now I have corrected SUSE to use the other partition as /home partition. I don't know if I'd have tons of problems in the future. I have installed several programs after 1 week of use. If it's just that I have to reinstall them again, that's not a big deal. But is that all?

And what damage I may have caused to Ubuntu if you don't mind me asking here?

Thanks !

[hcvv]

Installing programs from the repositories does nothing to the home directories of the users. Thus, except when you mean by installing, putting thngs in a users home directory, there is no need for concern here.

In general I should not worry to much. It could be that some configurations you made when using version A of a program on Ubuntu, do not match with version B when running openSUSE. If I were you, I wouuld just wait what happens.

BTW, giving those two file systems a label and then mount them by label (something that is a meaning full label to you of course like Home_U and Home_S) could prevent the mistake you made.

[bonedriven]

Installing programs from the repositories does nothing to the home directories of the users. Thus, except when you mean by installing, putting thngs in a users home directory, there is no need for concern here.

In general I should not worry to much. It could be that some configurations you made when using version A of a program on Ubuntu, do not match with version B when running openSUSE. If I were you, I wouuld just wait what happens.

BTW, giving those two file systems a label and then mount them by label (something that is a meaning full label to you of course like Home_U and Home_S) could prevent the mistake you made.

Thank you. Yes I installed most stuff with "sudo zypper install". I don't find opensuse having any problem yet, but Ubuntu seems to be messed up now... The KDE DE I installed for ubuntu seems disappeared, along with some other weird stuff happening. I am going to reinstall ubuntu.

I did label those partitions but don't know when those labels were lost...I used a partition manager in windows once and it broke the Grub and I had to repair the grub. I guess that's when everything began to mess up.

[Knurpht]

I did label those partitions but don't know when those labels were lost...I used a partition manager in windows once and it broke the Grub and I had to repair the grub. I guess that's when everything began to mess up.

AFAICS you already found the culprit. Never use Windows partition managers ... Rather use a linux based partitioning USB disk, or the partitioners that come with openSUSE and Ubuntu.
Basically KDE is KDE, so things should work with a shared homedir, but of course Ubuntu will not find the default theme applied in openSUSE. I used to "solve" that in the past by copying the openSUSE default themes, styles etc. over to the Ubuntu install. But, my worries were more if kmail etc would work on both sides, and that was all working well.

[bonedriven]

AFAICS you already found the culprit. Never use Windows partition managers ... Rather use a linux based partitioning USB disk, or the partitioners that come with openSUSE and Ubuntu.
Basically KDE is KDE, so things should work with a shared homedir, but of course Ubuntu will not find the default theme applied in openSUSE. I used to "solve" that in the past by copying the openSUSE default themes, styles etc. over to the Ubuntu install. But, my worries were more if kmail etc would work on both sides, and that was all working well.

While I agree that linux partitioners are powerful and safer, I found a feature that they lack, transferring from and to between logical partition and primary partition. That seems very bad ass to me...

[robin_listas]

On 2013-08-23 16:26, bonedriven wrote:

> While I agree that linux partitioners are powerful and safer, I found a
> feature that they lack, transferring from and to between logical
> partition and primary partition. That seems very bad ass to me...

The problem is not really using a Windows partitioner, as long as it
understand Linux partitions (not all do). The problem here, I guess, is
that the numbers of the partitions changed, and thus Ubuntu used a
partition that was not intended for it.

You probably need to create a new user for it, and then copy all those
new files onto your home, instead of the openSUSE modified files, so
that ubuntu starts with fresh home files.

No need to reinstall it again completely.


--
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 "Dartmouth" at Telcontar)

[kasi042]

Installing programs from the repositories does nothing to the home directories of the users.

Well, except that many programs create directories or files with their user specific settings in the user's home directory. Most are hidden, best example is

~/.kde*

Of course that will not affect the basic installation or destroy a complete partition. But I think it can lead to "irritations" if different distros use different versions of the same program. Just "upgrading" openSUSE (reinstall from DVD leaving home partition) jumping several version step made me search for my e-mails and addresses after kde3 went to kde4.
Since that was not the exact problem of the OP I herewith apologize for being a smartass.

[hcvv]

Well, except that many programs create directories or files with their user specific settings in the user's home directory. Most are hidden, best example is

~/.kde*

That has nothing to do with installation (which is what I was talking about). Installing a package will NOT include looking if and how many users there are on the system and then start tinkering in their home directories. An application can of course, when the user starts it for the first time, create default configuration files and other things (even complete data bases) inside that users home directory.

And your ~/.kde* example is a good example. It is NOT created on installation of (any part of) KDE. But on first start of KDE by a user. Other users, who never use(d) any KDE component on that system will not have a ~/.kde4.

(Sorry for the late reaction, but I think my original answer was lost in the problems of the forums).