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Thread: Linux partitioning for reinstall

  1. #1
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    Linux partitioning for reinstall

    My linux distros are currently up and down more often than a bride's nightie (see Ubuntu migration thread).

    Is there a sensible way to partition my HDD so I can swap distros at a later date with minimal pain?

    At present I'm using the following:
    /dev/sda 232GB
    /dev/sda1 2GB swap
    /dev/sda2 25GB (boot /)
    /dev/sda3 115GB (/home)
    (90GB unused at present)

    If I ensure all personal stuff ends up in /home, will I be able to swap distros painlessly at a later date? (I assume a reinstall would only impact upon /dev/sda2)

    What about personal application data such as email? Will this end up in /dev/sda2 or can I force it to live in the relevant /home/<whoever> path?

    Do I need to take extra care seeing as I'm flipping between 32 bit and 64 bit distros? Apart from recompiling my own code would anything else be of concern?

    Finally, is there any way of having several linux distros on the same HDD and I choose whichever one is best for the job in hand at boot time, but whichever I choose they'll operate on the same /home in /dev/sda3? How would this work seeing as only one partition can be bootable (I assume?).

    Sorry for so many questions, but I'm starting to get the hang of this slightly and a little information is dangerous!

  2. #2
    Ah, Mrs. Peel! mike_w's Avatar
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    This being Linux, any user data always ends in /home/foobar. Anything that you can do as an ordinary user will always end up affecting something in /home/foobar, not / (/dev/sda2). If you want to reinstall, you could just format the root partition, and mount /home as it is - that will keep everything that's relevant to the user, not the system, and the new installation should just pick up everything (in /home) without a problem.
    Last edited by mike_w; 02-09-2006 at 01:02 PM.
    "Well, there was your Uncle Tiberius who died wrapped in cabbage leaves but we assumed that was a freak accident."

  3. #3
    UKMuFFiN
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    You can install more than one distro at a time and choose which one you want at boot up, im not sure if they can all share the same /home though but going by what Mike said, sounds like it should be ok, an alternative would be to format the 90gig as reiserfs or fat32(for sharing with windows) and use it to store all the stuff you wanna share between the distros.

  4. #4
    Agent of the System ikonia's Avatar
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    having a seperate /home partition for multiple distro can cause breakage.

    as Mike_w stated, most user data ends up in /home, however if you have say

    suse sda1
    ubuntu sda2
    /home sda3

    and you share /home between ubuntu and suse, then all the suse settings for your user held in /home/user/,$ files will potentially break with ubuntu.

    the idea of /boot being shared for multiple distros is excellent, however due to namings of System.map files for example a distro sharing /boot can overwrite these files.

    you may be better just sharing swap and having a self contained partition for each distro
    It is Inevitable.....


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