sharing /home between different linuxes
Hello, I am in the process of setting up a multi-boot system, where I may have Suse, Ubuntu and possibly another variant of linux. (I am in learning mode) Will there be any problems if I mount /home on one partition (say on /dev/hda5), and use that partition as /home for all of the flavours of linux? Would there be conflicts when installing one system if another already has its /home on /dev/hda5 or when upgrading? i.e. will the upgrade or install wipe the existing /home? Would there be any problems with using Gnome on one linux and kde on another? Would it be OK to share say Thunderbird email between the different flavours even if the versions of Thurderbird differed slightly? Is it a good idea? John
On Friday 25 November 2005 11:00, John Ryan wrote:
Hello,
I am in the process of setting up a multi-boot
system, where I may have Suse, Ubuntu and possibly another
variant of linux. (I am in learning mode)
Will there be any problems if I mount /home on one
partition (say on /dev/hda5), and use that partition as /home for all
of the flavours of linux?
Would there be conflicts when installing one system if another already
has its /home on /dev/hda5 or when upgrading? i.e. will the upgrade or install wipe
the existing /home?
Would there be any problems with using Gnome on one linux and kde on another?
Would it be OK to share say Thunderbird email between the different flavours
even if the versions of Thurderbird differed slightly?
Is it a good idea?
John
Unless your learning the differences between variants of Linux I don't see any advantages. I'd of thought it would be OK, however, I think some versions store programs in slightly different locations - allthough I'm not sure they should. I think you'd be better off choosing one and staying with it. Since the early nineties I've used slackware / redhat and now SuSE and for me by far the best has been SuSE - mainly because it has the best support forum but also because it's keenly priced for the box set (I always buy the box set, but skip a release i.e. v7, v9 and next v11 this gives SuSE some support while not costing me money every year) and it's easily available in Europe. Phil
On Friday 25 November 2005 05:00, John Ryan wrote:
Hello,
I am in the process of setting up a multi-boot
system, where I may have Suse, Ubuntu and possibly another
variant of linux. (I am in learning mode)
Will there be any problems if I mount /home on one
partition (say on /dev/hda5), and use that partition as /home for all
of the flavours of linux?
Would there be conflicts when installing one system if another already
has its /home on /dev/hda5 or when upgrading? i.e. will the upgrade or install wipe
the existing /home?
Would there be any problems with using Gnome on one linux and kde on another?
Would it be OK to share say Thunderbird email between the different flavours
even if the versions of Thurderbird differed slightly?
Is it a good idea?
There can be problems. Probably all can be resolved in one way or another. Here is a starter list to consider... 1) Possibility of one installation wiping out the home directory of another: There are probably steps you can take during installation ("advanced partitioning") to cover this, but I would only tell the first installation about the home partition then put the fstab info into the other distros after they were installed. 2a) Actual user/group IDs (not the names but the numerical IDs): Not all distros may choose to use the same numerical ID for users or groups. You will probably need to edit /etc/passwd. 2b) This might require extra care if each distro uses a different pasword scheme (MD5, legacy, etc.). 2c) Some distros have different schemes for using groups. For example SuSE puts all users in a group named "users". Red Hat creates a separate group for each user (with a name to match the user's name). 3) .profile, .bashrc, etc. Different distros may require different contents for these files, depending on how fancy you got with them. (e.g. Java directory specifications, etc. 4) Other applications' config files: I know I have dozens of "dot" files and directories for application configurations. These may not all be compatible with different versions of these apps on different distros. Even if they are compatible from an application point of view there might be things unique to different distros (path info, etc.) 5) I am sure there are more ...
[Robert Paulsen]
[John Ryan]
I am in the process of setting up a multi-boot system, where I may have Suse, Ubuntu and possibly another variant of linux. (I am in learning mode) Will there be any problems if I mount /home on one partition (say on /dev/hda5), and use that partition as /home for all of the flavours of linux? [...] Is it a good idea?
I think this is a good idea, given all distributions behave reasonably.
Here is a starter list to consider...
Good list! :-)
1) one installation wiping out the home directory of another [...]
What we do is making sure all homes are kept on /usr/local/home of their respective machines (each user has a preferred machine, and we used to keep their home near them; yet as of now, we moved all homes on a big and fast machine used as a file server). Then /home holds only a flurry of symbolic links, one per user, and the links are designed so they trigger the autofs machinery. It works very well for our team.
2a) Actual user/group IDs (not the names but the numerical IDs) [...]
For long, NFS has been able to translate IDs on the fly. However, for much longer, we never took chance with this, and have a central place for managing all user ids, and always kept them unique. So in practice, I cannot witness of the NFS translating machinery. But in theory, this should not give any problem.
2b) This might require extra care if each distro uses a different pasword scheme (MD5, legacy, etc.).
Not really, as long as each machine do its own validation. We avoided NIS so far (yet we ponder with the idea of giving it another try).
2c) SuSE puts all users in a group named "users". Red Hat creates a separate group for each user (with a name to match the user's name).
We merely follow the RedHat method on all our SuSE systems with no adverse effect. Users are also members of groups according to the local administrative structure of sub-teams.
3) .profile, .bashrc, etc.
This is more likely to be a problem. Our solution is that each user, besides his/her shared homes (we have more women then men here!), may have an own local area on each machine. By using symbolic links into that local area from with the shared area (we have a consistent way to do so), some files in the shared home "look" different from machine to machine. There is a danger however: some programs either mistrust symbolic links for their configuration, or radically remove them before saving back the configuration. We have been lucky enough to find a solution in each and every problematic case we saw so far, so it currently works for us, but we cannot assert it will always work.
4) "dot" files [...] may not all be compatible with different versions of these apps on different distros.
The solution for the previous point is also a solution for this one.
5) I am sure there are more ...
Undoubtedly. In our experience, however, this has been workable. It wholly relies on the fact that we systematically rework /home and /usr/local on each distribution we install, as part of our installation procedures, as links within other partitions, often on other machines. -- François Pinard http://pinard.progiciels-bpi.ca
On Friday 25 November 2005 08:59, François Pinard wrote: < a lot of good advice for sharing NFS mounted home directories > If I read the original post correctly, the question was about dual- or multi-boot of different distros on the same machine, but some of your ideas/comments probably apply in either case.
[Robert Paulsen]
If I read the original post correctly, the question was about dual- or multi-boot of different distros on the same machine, but some of your ideas/comments probably apply in either case.
Oh, sorry for the misreading. Thanks for warning me that I should read more carefully. (Maybe I should never reply before breakfast? :-) -- François Pinard http://pinard.progiciels-bpi.ca
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 John Ryan wrote:
Hello,
I am in the process of setting up a multi-boot
system, where I may have Suse, Ubuntu and possibly another
variant of linux. (I am in learning mode)
Will there be any problems if I mount /home on one
partition (say on /dev/hda5), and use that partition as /home for all
of the flavours of linux?
Some small issues may come up, but they'd probably be obvious things like, for example, a shortcut you make on your desktop to a program may not work on all flavors because the binaries are installed in different places. Also when you're setting up the first user on the next flavor, you will have to make sure that their UID's are the same in /etc/passwd. Some distros will begin numbering their users at a different number than others. Personally I would prefer dealing with these small discrepencies, rather than having a separate home folder for each disto.
Would there be conflicts when installing one system if another already
has its /home on /dev/hda5 or when upgrading? i.e. will the upgrade or install wipe
the existing /home?
In SUSE, if you go into the advanced partitioner and specify that you want an existing partion ( like '/dev/hda5' ) to be mounted as /home ( or any other mount point), it _will not_ format the drive by default. Not sure what Ubuntu does.
Would there be any problems with using Gnome on one linux and kde on another?
KDE and Gnome store their window manager home folder specific data in separate folders in your home drive, so this shouldn't be an issue.
Would it be OK to share say Thunderbird email between the different flavours
even if the versions of Thurderbird differed slightly?
Is it a good idea?
It caused a problem for me once because I didn't have the same extensions (namely Enigmail) installed for both. I'm currently using Thunderbird 1.0.6 and I've been using the same home folder since 0.9, so I don't think slightly different versions will specifically make a problem. - -- Jeff Hedley TC Networks, Inc. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFDhzdrN7/CuNq7GE4RAgzJAJ9eC9oELZSwvfgXGxA7GWS3gW3N/ACfRJ5+ DQuWKraQekN1WdtdwMrlNL4= =Kv37 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
John Ryan wrote:
Hello,
I am in the process of setting up a multi-boot
system, where I may have Suse, Ubuntu and possibly another
variant of linux. (I am in learning mode)
Will there be any problems if I mount /home on one
partition (say on /dev/hda5), and use that partition as /home for all
of the flavours of linux?
Would there be conflicts when installing one system if another already
has its /home on /dev/hda5 or when upgrading? i.e. will the upgrade or install wipe
the existing /home?
Would there be any problems with using Gnome on one linux and kde on another?
Would it be OK to share say Thunderbird email between the different flavours
even if the versions of Thurderbird differed slightly?
Is it a good idea?
Some things will work just fine shared across multiple distros (~/.ssh). Other things will not (~/.kde). The techniques described in this article will let you share the things that can be shared well, and leave things that are problematic different for each distro. http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/11802.html
On Fri, 25 Nov 2005 11:00:21 +0000
John Ryan
I am in the process of setting up a multi-boot system, where I may have Suse, Ubuntu and possibly another variant of linux. (I am in learning mode) Will there be any problems if I mount /home on one partition (say on /dev/hda5), and use that partition as /home for all of the flavours of linux? Would there be conflicts when installing one system if another already has its /home on /dev/hda5 or when upgrading? i.e. will the upgrade or install wipe the existing /home? Would there be any problems with using Gnome on one linux and kde on another? Would it be OK to share say Thunderbird email between the different flavours even if the versions of Thurderbird differed slightly? Is it a good idea?
This is what I read in TUX Magazine #8 p. 38: <start quote> Sharing partitions: when you are running several versions of Linux, it is very tempting to force them all to share a partition or two. One of the biggest temptations is to create a separate partition for your home directory, and then make all your Linux distributions use this partition. Don't even try it unless you really, really, really know what you are doing. Here are some of the problems you will have to solve. One distribution may assign your user and group ID to 1000 and 1000, respectively, and the next will assign 500 and 500. Now you have permission problems to iron out. One distribution may use KDE 3.3, another may use KDE 3.4, and still another a custom version of KDE. All may assume your KDE configuration files reside in the directory /home/username/.kde. You will experience problems using KDE on one, two or all three distributions if they share this directory. I could go on and on. I have managed to share several directories across multiple distributions, including even all the Firefox browser configuration files. But it wasn't easy to do, it doesn't work for all distributions, and I make regular backups in anticipation of the day one of the distributions updates Firefox and makes these files incompatible with the other distributions. <end quote>
participants (7)
-
Bart Whiteley -
François Pinard -
Jeff Hedley -
John Ryan -
Phil Burness -
Robert Paulsen -
Sjoerd Hiemstra