[gentoo-user] Share /home with Gentoo and Ubuntu

[gentoo-user] Share /home with Gentoo and Ubuntu

[Randy Westlund]

Hi,

I'm a new gentoo user (coming from ubuntu).  I've been proving to
myself that I can do everything I need with gentoo on a secondary
laptop, and after a few weeks, I think I've got it (svn repos, AVR
cross compiler, multiple screens, etc).  I much prefer gentoo to
ubuntu, and would like to put it on my primary laptop.  But I think I
should leave an ubuntu installation on there just in case.  I'd like
to have gentoo, ubunu, and win7 alongside each other.

How feasible would it be to have gentoo and ubuntu share a /home
partition?  I've never had a reason to have multiple linux
installations on a single machine before, but I can't think of a
reason why this wouldn't work.  .bashrc might need a few more lines of
code. .screenrc and .exrc would be fine.  My ssh keys can  be shared.
What would happen to .mozilla if ubuntu and gentoo are running
different versions of firefox?  What other issues might I run into?

Alternatively, is there a way to keep gentoo's and ubuntu's hidden
files separate and link or map them to ~ at boot?

Randy

Re: [gentoo-user] Share /home with Gentoo and Ubuntu

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

Am Dienstag, 27. November 2012, 12:34:29 schrieb Randy Westlund:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm a new gentoo user (coming from ubuntu).  I've been proving to
> myself that I can do everything I need with gentoo on a secondary
> laptop, and after a few weeks, I think I've got it (svn repos, AVR
> cross compiler, multiple screens, etc).  I much prefer gentoo to
> ubuntu, and would like to put it on my primary laptop.  But I think I
> should leave an ubuntu installation on there just in case.  I'd like
> to have gentoo, ubunu, and win7 alongside each other.
> 
> How feasible would it be to have gentoo and ubuntu share a /home
> partition?  I've never had a reason to have multiple linux
> installations on a single machine before, but I can't think of a
> reason why this wouldn't work.  .bashrc might need a few more lines of
> code. .screenrc and .exrc would be fine.  My ssh keys can  be shared.
> What would happen to .mozilla if ubuntu and gentoo are running
> different versions of firefox?  What other issues might I run into?
> 
> Alternatively, is there a way to keep gentoo's and ubuntu's hidden
> files separate and link or map them to ~ at boot?
> 
> Randy

okay.. have that done myself in the past.... first make sure that the user id 
is the same in Ubuntu and gentoo. You might run into trouble with firefox, 
chrome, gnome, kde because of different versions - might not will. But you will 
see some errors because of it at some point.  Make a backup and try it.

-- 
#163933

Re: [gentoo-user] Share /home with Gentoo and Ubuntu

[Michael Orlitzky]

On 11/27/2012 12:34 PM, Randy Westlund wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm a new gentoo user (coming from ubuntu).  I've been proving to
> myself that I can do everything I need with gentoo on a secondary
> laptop, and after a few weeks, I think I've got it (svn repos, AVR
> cross compiler, multiple screens, etc).  I much prefer gentoo to
> ubuntu, and would like to put it on my primary laptop.  But I think I
> should leave an ubuntu installation on there just in case.  I'd like
> to have gentoo, ubunu, and win7 alongside each other.
> 
> How feasible would it be to have gentoo and ubuntu share a /home
> partition?  I've never had a reason to have multiple linux
> installations on a single machine before, but I can't think of a
> reason why this wouldn't work.  .bashrc might need a few more lines of
> code. .screenrc and .exrc would be fine.  My ssh keys can  be shared.
> What would happen to .mozilla if ubuntu and gentoo are running
> different versions of firefox?  What other issues might I run into?
> 
> Alternatively, is there a way to keep gentoo's and ubuntu's hidden
> files separate and link or map them to ~ at boot?

You might have problems when Gentoo upgrades a package and Ubuntu falls
behind. For a made-up example, suppose Gentoo bumps XFCE to 4.12 and
Ubuntu is still at 4.10. XFCE will upgrade all of its config files in
~/.config, and the next time you boot to Ubuntu, things will probably crash.

I've had the same problem from time to time on a smaller scale with LyX,
GTK, Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.

You can work around it fairly easily, though. Just mount all of your
version-independent stuff separately, under ~/Documents or whatever. Or
never go back to Ubuntu =)

Re: [gentoo-user] Share /home with Gentoo and Ubuntu

[Randy Barlow]

On Tue, 27 Nov 2012 13:01:28 -0500, Michael Orlitzky  
<michael@orlitzky.com> wrote:
> You can work around it fairly easily, though. Just mount all of your
> version-independent stuff separately, under ~/Documents or whatever. Or
> never go back to Ubuntu =)

This is good advice. Another potential solution is to use symlinks to map  
the OS-dependent files to the right places.

Or you could make /home/username be OS dependent, with another OS  
independent volume mounted somewhere, perhaps /home/os_independent. Then  
you could make symlinks inside /home/username/Music to  
/home/os_independent/Music and what not. This might be a pain, but it  
would bypass that problem.

-- 
R

Re: [gentoo-user] Share /home with Gentoo and Ubuntu

[Peter Humphrey]

On Tuesday 27 November 2012 13:41:16 Randy Barlow wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Nov 2012 13:01:28 -0500, Michael Orlitzky
> 
> <michael@orlitzky.com> wrote:
> > You can work around it fairly easily, though. Just mount all of your
> > version-independent stuff separately, under ~/Documents or whatever.
> > Or never go back to Ubuntu =)
> 
> This is good advice. Another potential solution is to use symlinks to
> map the OS-dependent files to the right places.
> 
> Or you could make /home/username be OS dependent, with another OS
> independent volume mounted somewhere, perhaps /home/os_independent.

My solution is to have a separate partition called 'common' which I 
mount under my user home directory in whichever Linux I'm running at the 
time. Then anything I think I might need anywhere I just put in 
/home/prh/common/...

-- 
Rgds
Peter

Re: [gentoo-user] Share /home with Gentoo and Ubuntu

[Dale]

Peter Humphrey wrote:
> On Tuesday 27 November 2012 13:41:16 Randy Barlow wrote:
>> On Tue, 27 Nov 2012 13:01:28 -0500, Michael Orlitzky
>>
>> <michael@orlitzky.com> wrote:
>>> You can work around it fairly easily, though. Just mount all of your
>>> version-independent stuff separately, under ~/Documents or whatever.
>>> Or never go back to Ubuntu =)
>> This is good advice. Another potential solution is to use symlinks to
>> map the OS-dependent files to the right places.
>>
>> Or you could make /home/username be OS dependent, with another OS
>> independent volume mounted somewhere, perhaps /home/os_independent.
> My solution is to have a separate partition called 'common' which I 
> mount under my user home directory in whichever Linux I'm running at the 
> time. Then anything I think I might need anywhere I just put in 
> /home/prh/common/...
>


I used to have something similar myself.  I had a directory called
/data.  It had everything that I wouldn't want to lose even if I
switched OS's or something.  I always had it on a separate drive too.  I
kept documents, pictures, videos and such in there.  This started back
when I was switching from Mandrake to Gentoo.  I only recently got rid
of it and moved everything to my home directory like it should be since
I only have one distro.  That took me almost 10 years to change.  lol

I read the other day that Seamonkey says that going back a version could
lead to data loss.  It will actually detect that it is running a older
version and renames some file to .old or something.  The old
settings/data would be lost.  I'm not sure but Firefox may do something
similar.  I wouldn't be surprised if other apps do this too.  I think
they should support going back at least a few versions.  I can see them
not going back to Seamonkey V1 tho. 

OP, I would get my feet wet and when you get used to Gentoo and decide
whether you are going to keep it or switch, then move things to a more
permanent location.  Just be very careful when deleting things.  That rm
command is pretty unforgiving.  Sometimes, links can get you into trouble. 

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] Share /home with Gentoo and Ubuntu

[Philip Webb]

121127 Randy Westlund wrote:
> I'm a new gentoo user coming from Ubuntu.

Welcome !

> I've been proving to myself that I can do everything I need with Gentoo
> on a secondary laptop, and after a few weeks, I think I've got it:
> svn repos, AVR cross compiler, multiple screens, etc.  I much prefer
> Gentoo to Ubuntu and would like to put it on my primary laptop,
> but I think I should leave an Ubuntu installation on there just in case.
> I'd like to have Gentoo, Ubuntu and Win7 alongside each other.
> How feasible would it be to have Gentoo and Ubuntu share a /home partition?

It's likely to cause problems after a short time,
as the  2  OS's will vary in the way they handle config files
& pkgs wb updated at different times & to different versions.

Try having separate homes, but symlink most of your subdirs in Ubuntu
-- since you are likely to stop using it soon -- to those in Gentoo.
The subdirs to symlink wb those which contain your personal stuff
-- documents, pictures, whatever -- , which won't vary with OS.

-- 
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,   Philip Webb
ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|   Cities Centre, University of Toronto
TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'   purslowatchassdotutorontodotca

Re: [gentoo-user] Share /home with Gentoo and Ubuntu

[Randy Westlund]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 4:08 PM, Philip Webb <purslow@ca.inter.net> wrote:
> 121127 Randy Westlund wrote:
>> I'm a new gentoo user coming from Ubuntu.
>
> Welcome !
>
>> I've been proving to myself that I can do everything I need with Gentoo
>> on a secondary laptop, and after a few weeks, I think I've got it:
>> svn repos, AVR cross compiler, multiple screens, etc.  I much prefer
>> Gentoo to Ubuntu and would like to put it on my primary laptop,
>> but I think I should leave an Ubuntu installation on there just in case.
>> I'd like to have Gentoo, Ubuntu and Win7 alongside each other.
>> How feasible would it be to have Gentoo and Ubuntu share a /home partition?
>
> It's likely to cause problems after a short time,
> as the  2  OS's will vary in the way they handle config files
> & pkgs wb updated at different times & to different versions.
>
> Try having separate homes, but symlink most of your subdirs in Ubuntu
> -- since you are likely to stop using it soon -- to those in Gentoo.
> The subdirs to symlink wb those which contain your personal stuff
> -- documents, pictures, whatever -- , which won't vary with OS.
>
> --
> ========================,,============================================
> SUPPORT     ___________//___,   Philip Webb
> ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|   Cities Centre, University of Toronto
> TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'   purslowatchassdotutorontodotca
>
>

Thanks for all the advice.  I think I'm going to have separate /home
directories and symlink the important things.  Given that I don't
intend to use ubuntu very much, it makes the most sense.  But at some
point, I want to try this on a spare machine, just to see what
happens.  Perhaps if I run xfce on gentoo and kde on ubuntu, there
would be fewer collisions.