what is the best partitioning method to install multiple linux distros in one system

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1

I’m going to install opemSUSE 12.2 and Ubuntu 12.o4 and meybe Mandriva 11 alongside each other.
i want to format my laptop hard drive totally and thyen istall these Distros.
So, what is the best partitioning method to install these distros alongside each other in one system? (i do not want to install windows).
is it posible to have shared swap, /home, … partitions for all of them? is it good?
please explain in detailes.

2

Use gparted or Parted Magic to do the partitioning.

You can have the same swap
Sharing /home is a can of worms . You will most likely have different versions or tweaks of the DE so your config files will be different.
It can be done but takes a lot of thought and sweat.
Easiest is to have a partition that is shared (not /home) and then link it to each of the home directories to share data.

3

ilAli wrote:

> shared swap
Yes

>/home, … partitions for all

Not a good idea
I keep all mine separate

4

Do the partitioning first! In the different setups, choose the option which sounds the most complicated but is indeed the safest and the most efficient. Under openSUSE, this will be “Create partition setup”. Under Ubuntu 12.04, it is called “Something else” (No kidding). You will have to select the partition(s) and mount point(s). Write down which partition is going to be the root partition of each distro in advance. Do not reformat any partition you want to share (or its UUID will be changed). And definitely install openSUSE first! The best order is: openSUSE, Mandriva, Ubuntu.

Honestly, did this question deserve the five stars you gave to your own thread? A touch of elegance and humility wouldn’t hurt.

5

Mandriva is pointless (today). Install Mageia or Fedora … or if you really want to learn something else, Arch Linux (might be a little bit tough for newbies).

6

yes, i think if someone give this thread a good answer, it could be a 5 star thread for newbies who want to install multiple distros in one system. also, anyone believes that his/her oppinion is the best aren’t you?
Honestly, if the stars harm you, you give the thread 1 star to balance or adjust it.

7

On Thu, 30 Aug 2012 21:16:03 +0000, ilAli wrote:

> yes, i think if someone give this thread a good answer, it could be a 5
> star thread for newbies who want to install multiple distros in one
> system. also, anyone believes that his/her oppinion is the best aren’t
> you?

The point of the rating system is not to predict if a thread is going to
be useful, but to rate a thread that /is/ useful so it can be found by
users looking for a good answer.

So it’s best not to rate it until after you’ve resolved the issue, rather
than to rate it when you post the question or shortly afterwards.

Rating the thread prematurely affects the usefulness of the thread rating
system.

Jim

Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

8

OK, i got it.

9

My laptop hard drive is 250 GB. how should i make partitions on it to install 3 linux distro?
if you were me how many partitions did you make? please lest them.

10 
#! /bin/bash

hdd_size=250
swap_size=2
root_size=40

printf "%-9s: %s GiB
" "swap" $swap_size

for dist in opensuse mandriva ubuntu ; do
	dist_size=$((($hdd_size - swap_size) / 3))
	printf "%-9s: / = %s GiB; /home = %s GiB
" $dist $root_size $(($dist_size - $root_size))
done

This is not the “best” partitioning however, just the short answer to your 5 stars question.

11

i think you are freezed on 5 stars! do you need someone to restart you?! lol!

12

Now the long answer.

Sharing the /home partition is the best and most efficient partitioning, but sharing the home directory would be insane. It means that sharing the /home partition is not for everyone, and if you’re asking the question, it is propably not for you. However since you’re asking - and to anyome else wondering the same thing and finding your excellent thread, here’s how to do it:

  • take about $(( 250 - (40 * 3) - 2)) = 128 GiB for /home
  • format /home only once, during the first setup (remember to install openSUSE first!)
  • create a different dummy user during each setup. These users will have their home directory in /home/dummy_user_name.
  • once you’re done installing, create the directories /home/openSUSE, /home/Ubuntu and /home/Fedora (because I told you already not to install Mandriva) and change the base home directory under each distro. Then /home will just be a partition like any other. The base home directory will be /home/openSUSE for openSUSE, etc. And user ilAli - as soon as you create him - will have his home directory in /home/openSUSE/ilAli under openSUSE, /home/Ubuntu/ilAli under Ubuntu, etc.
  • To change the base home directory - * before creating any user (except dumming during setup) * - , use the following command - as root (or sudo under Ubuntu):

openSUSE:

$ su -l
# mkdir /home/openSUSE
# useradd --save-defaults -d /home/openSUSE

Ubuntu (Mint, Debian) :

$ sudo mkdir /home/Ubuntu
$ sudo useradd -D -b /home/Ubuntu

Fedora (Mageia, Mandriva) :


$ su -l
# mkdir /home/Fedora
$ useradd -D -b /home/Fedora
  • Then it seems a good idea to also create /home/ilAli and put stuff there that can be shared under each distros, such as documents, bookmarks, addressbook or any kind of personal things … but NOT KDE, Gnome profiles or any distro specific settings - or any settings in general.

In general, you don’t need and you should not create other partitions besides /home and / and swap.

  • using a separate /usr nowadays will lead to problem with stuff located in /usr/lib and needed at boot (it’s a stupidity in modern Linux design).
  • using a separate /boot is useless and confusing.
  • using a separate /var and/or a separate /tmp will produce an invalid cross-device link fatal error and prevent X from starting if TMPDIR is set (it’s an old bug Xorg devs are unable or unwilling to fix: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg-server/+bug/972324). The workaround if you use a separate /tmp is to unset TMPDIR before starting X. Unlike mentioned in the bug report, it is not specific to Ubuntu.
  • Using a separate /usr/local is an option if you’re going to modify themes, or install external programs or your own scripts in /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/share, etc
  • You can still create another partition if you want to share stuff not located in /home. “/data” is usually an appropriate mount point for such a partition.

Is it complicated? I guess it is. But you asked for the best partitioning in the best auto-pre-rated thread … Thus, obviously, you were expecting the best answer from the best expert. lol!

13

as you mentioned, it is complicated and complete.
and as you mentioned, installing multiple linux distro alongside each other lead to create the directories /home/openSUSE, /home/Ubuntu and /home/Fedora. and inside these directories i will have following folders:
Videos, Musics, dcuments, Desktop, etc.
but i dislike this structure because i do not want to have for example 3 video directory or 3 music directory. i want to have only one video, music, document, … directory shared between all distros.

14

No. Videos, Musics and documents should be symlinks, but not Desktop.

You should only have one video and music directory. That’s the point of sharing the /home partition (but not the home directory - because this is not possible).

Here’s an example:

$ ls -l /home/openSUSE/agnelo/{Music,photos}
lrwxrwxrwx 1 agnelo tournesol 18 Feb 23  2012 /home/openSUSE/agnelo/Music -> /home/agnelo/Music
lrwxrwxrwx 1 agnelo tournesol 19 Feb 23  2012 /home/openSUSE/agnelo/photos -> /home/agnelo/photos

$ ls -l /home/Ubuntu/agnelo/{Music,photos}
lrwxrwxrwx 1 agnelo tournesol 18 Aug 28 00:50 /home/Ubuntu/agnelo/Music -> /home/agnelo/Music
lrwxrwxrwx 1 agnelo tournesol 19 Aug 28 00:50 /home/Ubuntu/agnelo/photos -> /home/agnelo/photos

$ ls -l /home/Mandriva/agnelo/{Music,photos}
lrwxrwxrwx 1 agnelo tournesol 18 Feb 23  2012 /home/Mandriva/agnelo/Music -> /home/agnelo/Music
lrwxrwxrwx 1 agnelo tournesol 19 Feb 23  2012 /home/Mandriva/agnelo/photos -> /home/agnelo/photos

$ ls -l /home/ArchLinux/agnelo/{Music,photos}
lrwxrwxrwx 1 agnelo tournesol 18 Feb 23  2012 /home/ArchLinux/agnelo/Music -> /home/agnelo/Music
lrwxrwxrwx 1 agnelo tournesol 19 Feb 23  2012 /home/ArchLinux/agnelo/photos -> /home/agnelo/photos

So you would create the directories you need (i.e Music, Videos, etc) under /home/ilAli and create symlinks in your home directory for each distro which point to these directories.


$ ln -s /home/ilAli/Music /home/openSUSE/ilAli/Music
$ ln -s /home/ilAli/Music /home/Ubuntu/ilAli/Music

etc.

15

I use separate /home partitions for each distro, but I have a couple of data partitions that each distro can access – one for music, the other one for everything else. Instead of symlinks, I simply add my important directories from my data partitions to Nautilus as bookmarks, for example, or I add them to the Places panel in Dolphin, that sort of thing.

16

One thing to keep in mind when sharing user partitions is that in
different distros the users have different uid’s, that can lead to
problems when it comes to user right on the files and directories.
For example in openSUSE the first user gets uid=1000 (and the other ones
1001, 1002 …) while some distro’s start with 500 instead.
So look carefully at that when you create your users.

–
PC: oS 12.2 x86_64 | i7-2600@3.40GHz | 16GB | KDE 4.8.4 | GeForce GT 420
ThinkPad E320: oS 12.1 x86_64 | i3@2.30GHz | 8GB | KDE 4.8.5 | HD 3000
eCAFE 800: oS 12.1 i586 | AMD Geode LX 800@500MHz | 512MB | KDE 3.5.10

17

Yes, that’s right. I forgot to say that. Actually I might have a little bit oversimplified my answer (but I told you it was not for everyone). You should make sure that your user(s) get the same UID under each distro. One way to achieve this is to specify the UID when you create the user. Another (better) approach is to make sure that UID_MIN in /etc/login.defs has the same value under each distro. In openSUSE, the login.defs variable might be overwritten by FIRST_UID in /etc/adduser.conf.

18

but i recently give a chance to mandriva and tested that. it was very good with a costomised kde. when i compare it with openSUSE 12.1, it seems that mandriva 11 has some inovative aspects in its kde environment while openSUSE just use kde without any major inovation or change on it expect of geen color theme.
do you test mandriva 11? if yes, what is your opinion about it?

19

That’s right. It is indeed so innovative that the control panel turns out looking like a smartphone interface (but worse) , and so customized that I don’t see how you can change it (I would have done something though, but no time)

http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg849/scaled.php?server=849&filename=mandriva2011live.png&res=crop](ImageShack - Best place for all of your image hosting and image sharing needs)

If you like this kind of design, then use Gnome3. It looks much better.

I still have a couple Mandrive 2010.2 systems with KDE, Gnome, Xfce, LXDE and everything else. I’m not interested in a distro which includes KDE only and leaves Gnome integration up to the community - which doesn’t exist anymore since all good people are gone and work on Mageia now.

I clearly don’t like it and won’t install it. If I ever need to boot it, I will use vboxlive.
The first time - to download the iso image:

$ vboxlive -o mandriva -D

The next time, just:

$ vboxlive -o mandriva

vbxlive is documented here: http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/how-faq-forums/unreviewed-how-faq/465445-running-linux-live-cds-disk-less-virtual-machines-under-virtualbox.html

20

Am 31.08.2012 20:16, schrieb please try again:
> (http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/1397/mandriva2011live.png)

Looks a bit like what you get when you switch the plasma workspace from
desktop to netbook style.

–
PC: oS 12.2 x86_64 | i7-2600@3.40GHz | 16GB | KDE 4.8.4 | GeForce GT 420
ThinkPad E320: oS 12.1 x86_64 | i3@2.30GHz | 8GB | KDE 4.8.5 | HD 3000
eCAFE 800: oS 12.1 i586 | AMD Geode LX 800@500MHz | 512MB | KDE 3.5.10