Re: Sharing file systems

Jeff Vian wrote:

On Sun, 2006-03-19 at 15:02 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:

On Sunday 19 March 2006 12:41, Jeff Vian wrote:

On Sun, 2006-03-19 at 17:30 +0530, Sumeet Pal Singh wrote:

HI
I have ubuntu 5.10 on my system and using FC3 since it was released.
I tried to install FC4 on my system by sharing the swap and /home
partition between FC4 and ubuntu. The installation went well. I did
not install KDE in FC4.
I was well aware of permission screw ups that this could lead to,
hence I did not create any user (The UID and GID of root is
preserved across Linux distros)

I booted in as root and created a new user with UID and GID same as
on ubuntu.
Now I booted in GNOME and it was completely configured!!!! Moreover
gaim started and signed me in to all my accounts!!! This was first
time login...

My question is that can is sharing /home okay for a long run or will
it lead to problems.
Also can other file systems like /usr be shared along with this and
if it can be  then under what restrictions??
If any one has done this please let me know.

As long as the filesystems are compatible anything can be accessed.

There is a _major_ caveat with sharing though.

Directories containing the programs, libraries, and configs may break
things quickly.  /lib, /bin, /sbin, and their counterparts in /usr would
likely not be good things to share since the binaries may not be
compatible.  Similarly, /etc could cause serious configuration problems.

I don't think I would try sharing any of the system directories between
distributions.

AFAIK there should be no problems with sharing of /home. It is done
all the time by many of us.

You already took care of the issue of UID/GID values and that is the
only thing I have ever had problems with in sharing /home between
systems.

There is one caveat I'd toss out Jeff, and thats that the options for setting up a default ext3 system ARE different between FC stuffs, and debian stuffs. In my case, the exact same version number of e2fsck (1.35) refuses to pass or even check, the other installs ext3 filesystems. So dual booting between FC4 and debian 3.1r1 is at best a pita.

Good point, and one I overlooked.  I just assumed that ext3 was ext3.  I
never anticipated a difference between distributions.

Thanks for the pointer, Gene. Filesystem compatibility is a must for

sharing a partition or even for accessing the other distribution's

directories.