I have Leap 15.0 and 15.1 installed on sdb sharing a common swap. I keep one earlier version for emergencies. Each of these include the /Home partition. In addition I have another partition for Data I keep permanently and mount under /root.
I plan to remove Leap 15.0 (both partitions i.e. root 40 GB and /Home 20 GB) and clean install 15.2. I wish to keep /Home in separate partition. Will it be possible to use the existing 15.1 /Home partition for both 15.1 and 15.2? That is I tell 15.2 at installation to use existing /Home and not format it. I use the same passwords for both versions.
Yes, it is possible. On one system I have a single partition for /home and 3 systems currently using the same partition mounted at /home.
But I suggest to use different users for different distributions, since each distro or desktop environment might use different configuration details not necessarily compatible with each other.
Passwords are used to login, not to access (/home/user) files, rather the user number rules. So if the first user created in 15.1 (say user151) and the first user created in the new 15.2 install (say user152) both have user#= 1000, each one should have access to the folders of the other, stored in /home/user151/ and /home/user152/ respectively. Of course your /data partition should be visible to both if they have the right permissions.
With such a setup Leap 15.1 will ignore user152 and Leap 15.2 will ignore user151 at login, but their files should be accessible by whichever user has user#=1000 in the running system.
Yes, that’s possible. But you probably have to use the expert partitioner.
When see a screen with a proposed partitioning, click of “Expert partitioner”. And go with the selection to start with existing partitions. Then you can tell it what to use for whatever. Within the expert partitioner, there is an option to import mount points. You might want to experiment with that.
If you make a mess of things in the expert partition, just abort and then try again. Until you tell it to actually begin the install, no changes will have been made on the disk.
However, a word of caution. When you share home directories with 15.1 and 15.2, that can cause problems due to disagreements over desktop settings for the two version.
I am reasonably familiar with the expert partitioner. And I am very chary of stepping into anything I don’t understand clearly. The separate Data partition in which I keep my permanent or long term stuff is mounted under root.
Come to think of it there is hardly anything I store/keep in /Home. Presently it holds only the 15.2 ISO download of 4 GB. So, for me, this partition is mainly holding the Desktop settings! I have been keeping 20 GB for it. This could be safely reduced to 10 GB to cater for interim holding. In that case it wont matter much whether it is on a separate partition or not.
But then is there any reason to make a separate partition for home? I do a similar thing, keeping home together with root. I use same user each version, no clash since it’s on a different partition. I can’t think of any problems. I think the reason for a separate home is what we both are using for “data”.
I use expert partition everytime I install OpenSUSE and the partition scheme on my SSD goes something like this:
/EFI
/LEAP 15.0
(~50GB empty space, not partitioned)
/home (user SJLPHI)
When I decided to upgrade. I fresh-install LEAP 15.1 in the empty partition and mount the same /home without formatting, and creating a new user in case the some incompatibilities are found at the previous user configuration.