Sharing /home folder with windows solved

[Dwood]

I like Linuxmint very much and am about to install it to a new hard disk so I can keep my windows installation.

Here is my plan, could anyone tell me if this will work or if there could be any problems with this?

1. I have a new 40gb hard drive that I am going to split into a 10gb partition for the Mint installation and a 30gb ntfs partition for sharing data. Windows will be kept on a separate hard drive.

2. Install Mint on to the 10gb partition and then mount the ntfs partition with Mint disk for read and write access.

3. Move the /home folder in Mint to the ntfs partition.

4. Import my documents, music, pictures etc into the /home folder and relevant directories.

5. Direct My Documents in windows to the home folder that should now be on the ntfs partition and contain all my stuff.

This to me seems like a good way to share data (including firefox and thunderbird settings) between Mint and windows.

Are there any problems I have not forseen before I go ahead and do this?

cheers

[jhouse59]

I'm new to Link. I don't know about moving the home folder to Windows. But, when I installed Mint it asked me if I wanted to import files from My Documents.

[Husse]

It's no good solution - the idea is Ok, but...
I share my FF and Thunderbird profiles between all OS installed on this computer - it's on a small ntfs partition which basically contains that and the Windows swap file. I have daily backups.
Why not the entire home - well ntfs is no linux filesystem and its journaling capacity is not used in linux (I compensate for that with daily backups)
Further - you simply can't use ntfs in your home partition - has to be a linux one, ext or reiser or....
You can do like this
create a 5 GB (5 is enough) for MInt's root
create a 15 GB home partiton and a 20 GB ntfs (or if you like a really small home 2 GB or something - but you must be aware that lots is stored there - saves in games take up a lot of space)
When you have installed mount the ntfs partition in the home folder in a folder you call something accurate like "common" (not share as that's something in networking)
To mount you create a line in fstab similar to the others in there like this:

Code: Select all

/dev/sdb1 /home/common     ntfs-3g    defaults,nls=utf8,umask=000,gid=46 0       1

Note: you have to create the folder "common" first and you have to use sudo to change fstab
Of course you exchange sdb1 with whatever you have.
It's best to backup fstab first

Code: Select all

sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab-bak

And you can't use mintDisk to achieve this

[Dwood]

oK husse, thank you for that, I will give it a go.

Could you just tell me how to open the fstab for editting?

Thanks

[Husse]

Code: Select all

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

[Dwood]

OK here is what I did and it seems to be working.

I partitioned the disk before installation and then directed the /home folder to its separate partition during installation. That took care of that.

Then I created a new folder in my home folder called 'windows'

Then edited the fstab file changing the mount point for hda6 (the shared partition from media/hda6 to /home/me/windows.

here is the fstab file changes highlighted in bold:

Code: Select all

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
#  -- This file has been automaticly generated by ntfs-config --
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# Entry for /dev/hda1 :
UUID=cbaf4e3d-7787-4324-a2dd-aa2e709d7081 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# Entry for /dev/hda5 :
UUID=f514e12a-bf8a-4cba-bb4d-2e2f74e5698c /home ext3 defaults 0 2
# Entry for /dev/hda2 :
UUID=29037287-9ca6-4043-afd6-95e7162ce8b9 /media/hda2 ext3 defaults 0 2
# Entry for /dev/hda6 :
UUID=3CCE2A4433215C9F /[b]home/me/windows [/b]ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 1
# Entry for /dev/hdb1 :
UUID=58AC11D9AC11B28C /media/hdb1 ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 1
# Entry for /dev/hda7 :
UUID=8e8e9b4d-71ed-41f7-b90a-e7b7cc216059 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hdd /media/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0

[Lolo Uila]

You could also just create symbolic links pointing to your Windows folders. For stuff like music and video files that are mainly read this works well. For stuff you will be editing frequently it's probably better to keep copies in each OS's native file system.