[sf-lug] /home in each distro; use of single shared-data partition (was /home on separate...)

[acohen36]

Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com> wrote in [1]:

> And here is the URL to Carla Schroder excellent article on setting
> up a data partition to hold the important data of /home.
> <https://www.linuxtoday.com/blog/2009/08/painless-linux.html>
>
> I used this for a while and it works but it takes some extra
> energy to setup.   The caution about the Grub updates mentioned
> elsewhere is very good advice.

Thanks for that link; it's actually what I do myself for multi-boot 
distros on my netbooks. I label and appropriately mount (and adjust 
/etc/fstab) Carla Schroder's "/home/carla/mydata" to something else like 
"/media/altshared" or "/media/distroshared" on the equivalent of her 
/dev/sda5, for my own consistent and easily identifiable purposes.
So usually something simple like this for four multiboot distros on, for 
example, a 160GB hd /dev/sda w/ 4GB phys-RAM

------------
1 /boot......1000MB or larger....ext4
2 swap.....RAM x 1.5 (6GB) .....fdisk-type 82, swap-part formatted
3 Extended partition.....remainder-of-sda.....fdisk-type 5
((logical partitions to follow))
5 /root(for distro1)....25GB.........ext4
6 /root(for distro2)....25GB......... "
7 /root(for distro3)....25GB......... "
8 /root(for distro4)....25GB......... "
9 /media/distroshared...50GB......."

All the mishmash of separate dot files (.config, .cache, .local, .gnome, 
etc.) that Ken S wrote about in [2] can stay in each distro's own "home 
location", most of each distro's /root-partition can have its own unique 
(or non-unique) selection of apps and files given the 25GB "quota" 
allotted above, and I can automount through each distro's own /etc/fstab 
the same /dev/sda9 onto the same /media/distroshared folder for as much 
shared data to offload from each distro's /home/user folder as I desire.

As far as the caution about the Grub updates "mentioned elsewhere", so far 
I've successfully taken Akkana P's second option of _manually_ adjusting 
each /boot/grub/grub.cfg for grub2 as in here
Akkana Peck <akkana at shallowsky.com> wrote in [3]:
> - Have no distro be the master, and update your grub2 files in /boot
>  by hand (they're actually perfectly readable and editable).

My own caveat when manually doing these grub2 edits is to Always Always 
Always _copy_ the current /boot/grub/grub.cfg to things like 
/boot/grub/distro1grub.cfg, /boot/grub/distro2grub.cfg, 
/boot/grub/distro3-grub.cfg, /boot/distro4-grub.cfg,... etc just _before_ 
running each distro's equivalent update-grub command.
These routine copying steps save an incredible amount of trouble later on 
during the invariable manual edits after each update!

-A

=============
References
=============
[1]http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/2018q1/013101.html
[2]http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/2018q1/013098.html
[3]http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/2018q1/013096.html



acohen36 at sdf.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.org