[LBo] Permanent /home partition

[Jisao]

Anita Lewis wrote:
> On 06/03/2006 05:05 PM Jisao wrote:
>
>> I have decided to install Suse 10.1 on my computer, along with the 
>> latest Dapper Ubuntu, on a few empty partitions. My question is:  how 
>> does having many distributions on a computer affect a /home partition 
>> (common to all) when it comes to the configuration files (.files in 
>> /home)?  I will end up with:  debian, kanotix rc15, kanotix 2005-3, 
>> Suse and Ubuntu.
>>
>> Jisao
>>
>
> This can be problematic, because the configuration files are different 
> for different versions sometimes.  I've had problems and do not 
> recommend using the same home, especially for this wide variety of 
> distros.  Stefan has previously suggested using a common document 
> partition instead.  You would be able to mount it as 
> /home/user/documents, for example, in each distro.  I think you might 
> need to make the user have the same id number on each one in order to 
> be able to fully access the documents in each distro.
> Another possibility is to use the same /home but make a different user 
> for each distro.  I think that sort of defeats the purpose you have in 
> mind, though, of using the same documents in each and most likely the 
> same mail.  The mail and bookmarks would probably be things I'd want 
> to get at.  Using a common document partition for that would be 
> better.  I'd probably set my mail to be deposited in a directory on 
> that partition or set a link to a common mail directory.  I'd use the 
> same mail program on each distro.
> Anita
I already use different partitions than /home for my data.  One some, I 
share data from Win to Linux.  I started running into the 4.2 Gig limit 
of many filesystems.  I am looking for a good filesystem supporting 
large files which can be written by Windows and Linux.

Right now, I have a mish mash of partitions (on a 160 Gig drive):

hda1       Windows            NTFS       19.53 Gig
hda5        windata              NTFS       29.29 Gig
hda6        sharedata            FAT32     24.21 Gig
hda7                                  SWAP      510 MEG
hda8        Sarge (debian)                     5.4 Gig
hda9        Kanotix rc15      JFS           9.32 Gig
hda11      Kanotix 2005-3                  18.63 Gig
hda12      Ubuntu               EXT3        7.45 gIG
G:            Win large files     NTFS       19.25 Gig
unpartitioned                                       14.58 Gig

I might make smaller homes for each distro, and keep my data in hda6 
(which is starting to be quite packed).  We'll see.

Jisao