[opensuse-factory] Multiboot - shared /home w/separate Gnome version extensions possible?
Hi List, Now we have 13.2/Gome 3.14, Leap 42.1/Gnome 3.16 and soon Tumbleweed/Gnome 3.18 using Gnome DE. For ease and practical use (and disk space save) I prefere to use shared /home for multiboot installations with different roots. The only drawback I experience is that different Gnome versions has incompatible Gnome extensions. I.e to get my preferred environment setup while using Leap 42.1, I have to remove the incompatible Gnome 3.14 extensions installed and reinstall extensions for 3.16 and so on. Therefore I wonder if it would be possible to use different Gnome extensions installed 'in parallell' or separated, so that the current Gnome version in use automatical use the righ extension version? That would make testing and transitons between real installations more streamlined. Thanks, Terje J. Hanssen -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org
Moin, On Sat, 10 Oct 2015, 12:15:01 +0200, Terje J. Hanssen wrote:
Hi List,
Now we have 13.2/Gome 3.14, Leap 42.1/Gnome 3.16 and soon Tumbleweed/Gnome 3.18 using Gnome DE.
For ease and practical use (and disk space save) I prefere to use shared /home for multiboot installations with different roots. The only drawback I experience is that different Gnome versions has incompatible Gnome extensions. I.e to get my preferred environment setup while using Leap 42.1, I have to remove the incompatible Gnome 3.14 extensions installed and reinstall extensions for 3.16 and so on.
Therefore I wonder if it would be possible to use different Gnome extensions installed 'in parallell' or separated, so that the current Gnome version in use automatical use the righ extension version? That would make testing and transitons between real installations more streamlined.
I use various bind-mounts for this. Here is what I have in /etc/fstab: # OS specific redirection mounts: /home/manfred/.OS/os13.1/.cache /home/manfred/.cache none bind 0 0 /home/manfred/.OS/os13.1/.config /home/manfred/.config none bind 0 0 /home/manfred/.OS/os13.1/.fontconfig /home/manfred/.fontconfig none bind 0 0 /home/manfred/.OS/os13.1/.gconf /home/manfred/.gconf none bind 0 0 /home/manfred/.OS/os13.1/.gkrellm2 /home/manfred/.gkrellm2 none bind 0 0 /home/manfred/.OS/os13.1/.gnome2 /home/manfred/.gnome2 none bind 0 0 /home/manfred/.OS/os13.1/.icewm /home/manfred/.icewm none bind 0 0 /home/manfred/.OS/os13.1/.kde /home/manfred/.kde none bind 0 0 /home/manfred/.OS/os13.1/.kde4 /home/manfred/.kde4 none bind 0 0 /home/manfred/.OS/os13.1/.local /home/manfred/.local none bind 0 0 /home/manfred/.OS/os13.1/.rpmmacros /home/manfred/.rpmmacros none bind 0 0 /home/manfred/.OS/os13.1/.spamassassin /home/manfred/.spamassassin none bind 0 0 /home/manfred/.OS/os13.1/.themes /home/manfred/.themes none bind 0 0 /home/manfred/.OS/os13.1/.thumbnails /home/manfred/.thumbnails none bind 0 0 /home/manfred/.OS/os13.1/.xinitrc /home/manfred/.xinitrc none bind 0 0 If you have more than one user on your system, then you would have to maintain such a set for each of them; as this can be teadious, there are perhaps options to automate this using pam_mount and/or autofs. For each OS version you want to test/use, just create the files in ~/.OS/<os-name+version>. When installing a new OS, I'd recommend to not mount /home during installation.
Thanks, Terje J. Hanssen
HTH, cheers. l8er manfred
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 On 2015-10-10 12:15, Terje J. Hanssen wrote:
Hi List,
Now we have 13.2/Gome 3.14, Leap 42.1/Gnome 3.16 and soon Tumbleweed/Gnome 3.18 using Gnome DE.
For ease and practical use (and disk space save) I prefere to use shared /home for multiboot installations with different roots.
IMO, it is better not to share /home, but instead to share another partition, call it /otherhome or whatever. Then on each install use either the system "/" and a "/home" directory (or another small partition if you must). In your "/home/USERNAME/", create symlinks to directories in "/otherhome/USERNAME/", like Documents, to store whatever you need to share across your different installs. This way, you don't mix configurations of any program, which can create weird problems, and still keep a single separate partition for your data for all the installations. - -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" (Minas Tirith)) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) iF4EAREIAAYFAlYZA3gACgkQja8UbcUWM1xutQD/as8cPZUHNWFh8x3VvxWpXG8U 8Tb1qPAlPnq3w0DoWj4A+wTtiC0HH4B+rwetOj/ZQ4O5LKqJFFcPusIafSR9Ysf9 =OEjN -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org
IMO, it is better not to share /home, but instead to share another partition, call it /otherhome or whatever.
Then on each install use either the system "/" and a "/home" directory (or another small partition if you must).
In your "/home/USERNAME/", create symlinks to directories in "/otherhome/USERNAME/", like Documents, to store whatever you need to share across your different installs.
This way, you don't mix configurations of any program, which can create weird problems, and still keep a single separate partition for your data for all the installations.
-- Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" (Minas Tirith))
I am using this exact setup type. Using a separate harddrive just to store everything found in the Home folder, I do not waste too much time setting up a new Linux distro on my computer, because restoring everything is as easy as symlinking (and copying the bin, .ssh and .gnupg separately into the new Home). I have used it for 13.2, Tumbleweed, Fedora, and Kubuntu and it has allowed me to bounce back from disastrous experiments quite quickly.
participants (4)
-
Carlos E. R. -
Chan Ju Ping -
Manfred Hollstein -
Terje J. Hanssen