[SOLVED] Shared home partition with Ubuntu and Mint

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Fred

Re: Shared home partition with Ubuntu and Mint

Post by Fred »

Mapleblack,

I was just on my way out to get some lunch when I saw your post. If you can wait until I get back I'll be glad to help you with this. Probably be about an hour.

Fred
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Fred

Re: Shared home partition with Ubuntu and Mint

Post by Fred »

Mapleblack,

Now I am all fat and sassy. :-)

A few things to keep in mind. 10 - 12 Gig. is plenty of space to put into a / partition for Mint or Ubuntu. More than that you will probably never use and it just slows down your system. A smaller partition is a faster partition. I have 7 gig. of files in my / partition on a KDE install, which is bigger than a Gnome install, and I have everything but the kitchen sink on my install, (I like to play with stuff). Additional programs are what make the / grow. All your data goes into home. If you don't have data partitions, /home is what grows. Mint already comes with a more than respectable complement of programs, so you probably won't be adding much to your install for a general purpose desktop.

Your swap partition is rather large. A swap partition should not be bigger than 2X your physical RAM. The total of physical RAM plus swap should not exceed 4 Gig. on a 32 bit system. If it does, reduce the swap size accordingly to stay at 4 Gig. or less. You don't want to slow swap down when you can't use the extra space anyway. It is better to keep swap closer to the top of the partition table for speed but since you already have it where you do we will just leave it there. Just remember in the future if you need to completely redo you partitions to put the swap right after the Windows install on a primary partition.

Ok, the first thing I would suggest is to go to the url below and download and burn a live cd called Supergrub. This is handy to have around. You can boot into almost any install with it.

Download super_grub_disk_0.9711.iso

http://download.linux-live-cd.org/Super ... sgd/cdrom/


Next go to the site below and download and burn the Latest stable version of Gparted live cd iso.

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... _id=271779

This should give you the tools to do what you need to do and they will probably come in handy later on too.

This is what I would suggest you do. You will be using the Gparted live cd to do this:

1) I would shrink sda5 to 10 Gig.

2) I would shrink sda6 to 12 Gig.

3) Shrink your swap partition to whatever the above formula dictates, and put the space liberated into your /home on sda7.

4) Combine the liberated space and make another ext3 logical partition of 12 Gig. It will probably be called sda8.

5) Put the rest of the space you liberated into your current /home on sda7

That should not only give you space for another system but also give you more space in your /home partition that you use for storage.

Since you just installed Mint 4 you probably don't have a lot of stuff in that install to loose. I would reformat sda6.

Install your beta on sda8 all on the same partition.

Then install Mint 4 on sda6 all on the same partition.

When you install Mint 4 last it should pickup all the installs so they will all boot ok.

Then mount the single Ubuntu /home partition in a folder on each of your Mint install /home folders. When you make your installs, be sure to use the same user name to keep from having permissions problems.

As you have questions, post back.

Fred

EDIT: When you get this far we will need to become familiar with /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/menu.lst and correct your UUIDs and boot stanzas.
Fred

Re: Shared home partition with Ubuntu and Mint

Post by Fred »

Mapleblack wrote:
put the swap right after the Windows install on a primary partition." Why is that exactly?
It is because of the mechanics of the drive. The outside of the disk is moving at a higher rate of speed than the inside of the disk. Data that resides on the outside of the disk will pass under the read/write head of the drive faster than it would if it were on the inside of the disk. Therefore it can be read faster. The outside of the disk is at the top of the partition table, and on the left of the Gparted graphic.
I got about 2 gigs of RAM and this is how it ended up, it's what the installer recommended.
Installers are infamous for not installing very smart. This is true regardless of the distro. They get the job done, in most cases, to give the user a working system but that is about the extent of their capabilities. Optimizing an install to the users system is beyond their capabilities.
At some point my Ubuntu installation reached about 14 gig, I wouldn't know how to get it that far now though.
About the only way I can see that you could reasonably get it to there would be you never cleaned out your repo catch and /tmp files. Were you compiling some programs too?
Ok but I also want to link some .config folders like .transmission and .tomboy. As I said I want to make a note in Tomboy in Mint, but it has to show up in the other Mint and on Ubuntu to.
I don't know if this is feasible or not. I am not familiar with these two programs. It might be possible to force all the incidents of this program to use the same config file. You might try asking that question on the project forums. The question would be, "how do I get Tomboy to use a single config file for all users." I don't know how symlinks would work out. You might be able to symlink all the installs to a single config file. It would be worth a try. Otherwise you won't be able to do it with what I have showed you. You might pull it off by letting all the installs use the same user name and the same /home, but I wouldn't recommend this. You will have constant problems and conflicts between the installs. It will become a nightmare, just to get those two programs to work the way you want.

Fred
Fred

Re: Shared home partition with Ubuntu and Mint

Post by Fred »

micpet,

Partitions are mounted or bound to folders in a Linux system. You could create a folder in the Mint /home/fred folder called, let's say, BuntuHome. Then mount the partition the Ubuntu /home was on to it when Mint starts. You would do this by putting a line into Mint's /etc/fstab file. Then when you looked in the /home/fred folder of Mint you would see the BuntuHome folder. When you opened it you would be seeing the /home/fred folder of the Ubuntu install. That way you would have available in your Mint /home all the data in your Ubuntu /home.

I hope that helps some.

Fred
Husse

Re: Shared home partition with Ubuntu and Mint

Post by Husse »

Did I read use the same user name in the same home partition
Ouch - this will create problems - even for geeks - I know :)
Fred

Re: Shared home partition with Ubuntu and Mint

Post by Fred »

Husse,

No. you didn't see that in that context. Look again. I said it would perhaps solve the problem with one particular program but cause a nightmare otherwise. :-)

Fred
Fred

Re: Shared home partition with Ubuntu and Mint

Post by Fred »

Mapleblack,

Now I am a little confused. lol

What do you have here. I am assuming sda5 is your Ubuntu install. If so you should have a separate /home partition for it the way we had it planed. That would be sda7. You need one /home partition which can be for the Ubuntu install or the Mint install. Did you reinstall Ubuntu? It looks like you did from the Gparted graphic.

Before you change anything from here, catch me up on what you have done please. Looks like you have your partitions right though.

Fred
Fred

Re: Shared home partition with Ubuntu and Mint

Post by Fred »

Husse,

I believe we are in the wrong area of the forum for this. Please feel free to move this to the Installation section. :-)

Fred
Fred

Re: Shared home partition with Ubuntu and Mint

Post by Fred »

No I was just confused. :-)

Where is your Ubuntu install?

Fred
Husse

Re: Shared home partition with Ubuntu and Mint

Post by Husse »

Yeah this most definitely belongs to the install section :)
And I did not even notice where it was
Fred

Re: Shared home partition with Ubuntu and Mint

Post by Fred »

Mapleblack,

Yeah that will work fine. I was just confused because I didn't see the Ubuntu partition. Thought maybe you had changed you mind about having the Ubuntu install.

You will need to make the Ubuntu / about 10 Gig. and set your big partition as home for the Ubuntu install. Do the Ubuntu install next.

Do the Mint 4 install last. All in the one partition as we discussed.

We then have some editing to do. Use Supergrub to boot into any install that won't boot. Post a copy of the /etc/fstab file for each install. Also, post a copy of each /boot/grub/menu.lst. I will fix them for you.

Don't be surprised if an install won't boot or work right. Each time you install a system you mess up the UUIDs of the other installs. It is easiest to wait until all the installs are made and correct them all at the same time. :-)

The last install you make will probably be the only one that will boot and run right, until the editing is done.

Fred
Fred

Re: Shared home partition with Ubuntu and Mint

Post by Fred »

Husse,

Can you move the whole thread or do you need us to stop and start another thread?

Fred

EDIT: I see you are way ahead of me.... :-)
Fred

Re: Shared home partition with Ubuntu and Mint

Post by Fred »

Mapleblack,

I am going to get a bite to eat. I'll be back in about an hour. You should be able to keep busy until I get back. :-)

Let grub install to the mbr on each install. We are going to change it all anyway. Just don't panic that the only install that works is the last one you installed. We will fix it. :-)

Fred
Husse

Re: Shared home partition with Ubuntu and Mint

Post by Husse »

Just don't panic that the only install that works is the last one
They should all work :)
Fred I assume you're talking of that they won't boot
They generally don't after an install only the last install has a correct menu.lst and is able to boot - I don't care any more - that's enough :)
To discover this you have to start using another grub ...
Fred

Re: Shared home partition with Ubuntu and Mint

Post by Fred »

Husse,

Well in this case he is making three installs. All of them use UUIDs, so only the last install will have the correct UUIDs and a correct menu.lst. So only the last one installed will boot and work correctly. :-)

Once we correct the Menu.lst and the fstab everything will be ok. :-)

Fred
Husse

Re: Shared home partition with Ubuntu and Mint

Post by Husse »

Sorry - fstab gets screwed up too - you're right. I normally change to /dev/sdxx when I'm happy with it
Fred

Re: Shared home partition with Ubuntu and Mint

Post by Fred »

Mapleblack

Thought I forgot about you didn't you? :-)

I need to know what your username is.

Also, would you repost the /boot/grub/menu.lst for Ubuntu. The one you posted as Ubuntu was actually Daryna. That's ok, go ahead and make your mistakes now. When we start editing, mistakes aren't allowed. :-)

Fred

EDIT: Also. Is this a laptop?
AK Dave

Re: Shared home partition with Ubuntu and Mint

Post by AK Dave »

I'm following this discussion eagerly because this is almost exactly what I want to do at home. I have an existing Ubuntu install, currently upgraded to 8.04, with seperate partitions for swap / /boot /usr and /home. I already plan to scrub and reinstall the Ubuntu. I'd like to put Mint Elyssa alongside. Can Ubuntu and Mint share the same /boot or should I scrap that plan entirely? Can Ubuntu32 and Mint share the same /usr? That would be very cool.

I'd like to do this while not messing with my existing /home AND while maintaining a seperate /boot partition. I'd really like to have Evolution share data between all installs.

Current partition layout is:
1gb /boot - massive overkill
10gb /
4gb swap
30gb /usr - massive overkill
115gb /home

Proposed partition layout is:
1gb /boot - still massive overkill
4gb swap
10gb / - Ubuntu64
10gb / - Mint Elyssa
10gb / - Ubuntu32
10gb / - unallocated at present
115gb /home

The idea of a shared /usr between several different Debian-derivatives would be very efficient, if this is possible. Any thoughts? Or should I not bother?
Husse

Re: Shared home partition with Ubuntu and Mint

Post by Husse »

While it is possible to share boot this is something I do not recommend. I know Fred can fill in
I don't know if a shared /usr would be possible, but I would not recommend that either
And both options are for "super gurus"
Fred

Re: Shared home partition with Ubuntu and Mint

Post by Fred »

AK Dave,

To answer your question. The short answer is yes, it can be done. Having said that. Unless you are pretty familiar with Linux I wouldn't suggest it. It won't be a plug-n-play set-up. Depending on the distros involved there may be some tweaking necessary to get all the distros to run properly together.

In my opinion it would be more trouble than it is worth unless you are talking about a lot of large, special programs you have, or are going to compile, that you want to share instead of having to duplicate them for each install. It just isn't that beneficial for a desktop binary distro like Mint or Ubuntu. You also have all your eggs in one basket, so-to-speak. An up grade on one distro could break the others, so you have to be very careful when trying to upgrade programs.

On the issue of helping you. I will be happy to do so when I finish with the gentleman I am working with now. I have a single tasking mind in a multi-tasking world. :-)

I would rather not take on another project until I finish with this one. If you will start another thread with the information that you posted above, I will respond when I finish here. :-)

Fred

EDIT: Sharing /boot would be a nightmare. Don't :-)
Locked

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