This is a method I have followed for several years, distros, and versions. It
is for reference and is in not intended to work in every situation. Use it at
your own risk.
*** ALWAYS BACKUP YOUR DATA BEFORE MAKING ANY MODIFICATIONS!!!
1: Create separate partition (/common) with PartedMagic or Gparted - large
enough for all of the users “data”
2: Create folders/directories for each of the usual “data” folders found in
/home (i.e.: Documents, Music, Pictures, etc.)
3: In /home/user, delete the usual “data” folders and replace them with
symlinks to the folders in /common
4: This should only be for the normal “data” folders (Documents, Music, Mail,
Pictures, Video, etc.)
The purpose of this method is to allow different distros (or even different
versions of any distro) to share the DATA files but not configuration files. The
reason for this is that each distro (or version) will frequently use different
programs or program versions. Unexpected results or corruption could result if
the configurations are mixed. For instance, a program in OS 11.4 might have
version 1.0 whereas OS 12.1 might have that program but in version 2.2 which has
a different configuration file structure causing havoc for the user.
The user must still be aware that some change in the data file could have
occurred and take steps to resolve that situation.
In a multiboot config where you could have two distros sharing the same data by your method, have you done that, and with what distros sharing the data concurrently?
I have not tested a system like that jet. I think it would be best if the ‘main’ user-accounts of the different installations/distributions would have the same User ID (uid) number like 1000 (which would be the standard UID for the first user in openSUSE nowadays) to avoid problems with right/privileges.
On 03/11/2012 07:06 PM, pistazienfresser wrote:
>
> Thanks for your tutorial/instruction, tommyttt!
>
> I have not tested a system like that jet. I think it would be best if
> the ‘main’ user-accounts of the different installations/distributions
> would have the same User ID (uid) number like 1000 (which would be the
> standard UID for the first user in openSUSE nowadays) to avoid problems
> with right/privileges.
>
>
> Regards
> Martin
>
>
I’m really interested in the Ubuntu case, because they have unusual
ownership of /home files.
I haven’t tried Ubuntu yet so don’t know how it would work there. I’ve used it with multi-boot of openSuSE, Fedora, and ScientificLinux and it worked. Had to adjust the UIDs and GIDs accordingly to reflect the same values. Did that during installation and setup of the distros, before actual using the accounts. If that weren’t done there could be some problems with file ownership.
I have used this method for several years on different computers. Currently dual booting win 7 and openSUSE 12.1 on Toshiba notebook. I format data partitions as FAT32 and access from either system with no issues.
On previous computer, actually had win7, Mepis and openSUSE 11. sharing data files.
Probably that also let the problem of user IDs (UID) and group IDs (GID) ‘not appear’ (as FAT32 knows no rights management), does it?
Do you use extra partitions for huge files for the Microsoft and the Free Systems in such installation? Or do you keep just the “Download” directories on the root/system partition?