I'm dual booting F9 and F11. There is a partition that mounts on F9:/home and on F11:/home. I suspect that my ~/.* directories are stepping on each other. I want to reorganize so that the to-be-former home partition mounts on F9:/homes and on F11:/homes. F9:/home would be a symbolic link to /homes/F9. F11:/home would be a symbolic link to /homes/F11. User fred would have home directories with canonical names /homes/F9/fred and /homes/F11/fred . Each would have a symbolic link to /homes/fred, his old home directory.
Once upon a time, I would boot from a live CD, reorganize the directories, and edit the fstabs. IIRC fstabs now get rewritten at boot time. Mere hand editing won't do the trick. What will do the trick?
Also, is there a way to use labels instead of those awful UUIDs? I concede their usefullness if one has a lot of disks or a lot of turnover. I have four disks.
On Wed, 2009-09-30 at 12:13 -0500, Michael Hennebry wrote:
I'm dual booting F9 and F11. There is a partition that mounts on F9:/home and on F11:/home. I suspect that my ~/.* directories are stepping on each other. I want to reorganize so that the to-be-former home partition mounts on F9:/homes and on F11:/homes. F9:/home would be a symbolic link to /homes/F9. F11:/home would be a symbolic link to /homes/F11. User fred would have home directories with canonical names /homes/F9/fred and /homes/F11/fred . Each would have a symbolic link to /homes/fred, his old home directory.
Once upon a time, I would boot from a live CD, reorganize the directories, and edit the fstabs. IIRC fstabs now get rewritten at boot time. Mere hand editing won't do the trick. What will do the trick?
Also, is there a way to use labels instead of those awful UUIDs? I concede their usefullness if one has a lot of disks or a lot of turnover. I have four disks.
---- first, the fact that you are dual booting F9 and F11 demonstrates the need to use UUID's
second - if you want to muck around with /home, probably better to just mount and 'bind' mount (see 'man mount') because then you won't have issues with things like selinux but remember that you will have to edit the 'users' $HOME in /etc/passwd to reflect the change for each installation...
(assuming /home/Fedora11/ is where users home folders are)
i.e.
mkdir /home/F9 mkdir /home/F11
edit /etc/fstab /home/Fedora11 /home/F11 bind,rw 0 0
edit /etc/fstab (dangerous) might want to use system tools to do this craig:x:500:500:Craig White:/home/F11/craig:/bin/bash
I'd probably forget about symbolic links but you might be able to make them work
Craig
On Wed, 30 Sep 2009, Craig White wrote:
On Wed, 2009-09-30 at 12:13 -0500, Michael Hennebry wrote:
I'm dual booting F9 and F11. There is a partition that mounts on F9:/home and on F11:/home. I suspect that my ~/.* directories are stepping on each other. I want to reorganize so that the to-be-former home partition mounts on F9:/homes and on F11:/homes. F9:/home would be a symbolic link to /homes/F9. F11:/home would be a symbolic link to /homes/F11. User fred would have home directories with canonical names /homes/F9/fred and /homes/F11/fred . Each would have a symbolic link to /homes/fred, his old home directory.
Once upon a time, I would boot from a live CD, reorganize the directories, and edit the fstabs. IIRC fstabs now get rewritten at boot time. Mere hand editing won't do the trick. What will do the trick?
Also, is there a way to use labels instead of those awful UUIDs? I concede their usefullness if one has a lot of disks or a lot of turnover. I have four disks.
first, the fact that you are dual booting F9 and F11 demonstrates the need to use UUID's
I don't get the connection. Why not labels?
second - if you want to muck around with /home, probably better to just mount and 'bind' mount (see 'man mount') because then you won't have issues with things like selinux but remember that you will have to edit the 'users' $HOME in /etc/passwd to reflect the change for each installation...
(assuming /home/Fedora11/ is where users home folders are)
On F11, /home will be a symbolic link to /homes/F11 fred's home directory will be /homes/F11/fred aka /home/fred .
i.e.
mkdir /home/F9 mkdir /home/F11
edit /etc/fstab /home/Fedora11 /home/F11 bind,rw 0 0
edit /etc/fstab (dangerous) might want to use system tools to do this craig:x:500:500:Craig White:/home/F11/craig:/bin/bash
This suggests to me that I did not remember correctly, i.e. the boot sequence will not write over fstab. Is that correct? Will the boot sequence leave fstab alone?
I'd probably forget about symbolic links but you might be able to make them work
On Wed, 2009-09-30 at 17:42 -0500, Michael Hennebry wrote:
On Wed, 30 Sep 2009, Craig White wrote:
On Wed, 2009-09-30 at 12:13 -0500, Michael Hennebry wrote:
I'm dual booting F9 and F11. There is a partition that mounts on F9:/home and on F11:/home. I suspect that my ~/.* directories are stepping on each other. I want to reorganize so that the to-be-former home partition mounts on F9:/homes and on F11:/homes. F9:/home would be a symbolic link to /homes/F9. F11:/home would be a symbolic link to /homes/F11. User fred would have home directories with canonical names /homes/F9/fred and /homes/F11/fred . Each would have a symbolic link to /homes/fred, his old home directory.
Once upon a time, I would boot from a live CD, reorganize the directories, and edit the fstabs. IIRC fstabs now get rewritten at boot time. Mere hand editing won't do the trick. What will do the trick?
Also, is there a way to use labels instead of those awful UUIDs? I concede their usefullness if one has a lot of disks or a lot of turnover. I have four disks.
first, the fact that you are dual booting F9 and F11 demonstrates the need to use UUID's
I don't get the connection. Why not labels?
second - if you want to muck around with /home, probably better to just mount and 'bind' mount (see 'man mount') because then you won't have issues with things like selinux but remember that you will have to edit the 'users' $HOME in /etc/passwd to reflect the change for each installation...
(assuming /home/Fedora11/ is where users home folders are)
On F11, /home will be a symbolic link to /homes/F11 fred's home directory will be /homes/F11/fred aka /home/fred .
i.e.
mkdir /home/F9 mkdir /home/F11
edit /etc/fstab /home/Fedora11 /home/F11 bind,rw 0 0
edit /etc/fstab (dangerous) might want to use system tools to do this craig:x:500:500:Craig White:/home/F11/craig:/bin/bash
This suggests to me that I did not remember correctly, i.e. the boot sequence will not write over fstab. Is that correct? Will the boot sequence leave fstab alone?
I'd probably forget about symbolic links but you might be able to make them work
---- first...I made a mistake which I would like to correct.
edit /etc/fstab (dangerous) might want to use system tools to do this craig:x:500:500:Craig White:/home/F11/craig:/bin/bash
should have been to edit /etc/passwd
second, there are many good reasons to use uuid in references in /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/grub.conf and some of them are listed here... http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/146951 this author glosses over the most obvious reason...that an install with Fedora 9 & 11 will leave you with 2 /boot partitions and probably 2 / partitions.
Inherent in the logic that wants to use /dev/sda1 for /boot is the assumption that it will always be a particular hard drive but this depends upon nothing ever changing and things always change.
Using UUID's makes changes in BIOS order of hard drives insignificant.
I am not exactly sure why you bothered asking the list about all of this if you are determined to do symbolic links and the old style labels.
I suspect that if you go your route, you will end up with a confused, difficult to maintain, selinux off dual-boot computer but it is your computer and you should do as you please.
but the answer to your last question...No, boot sequence will never over write/change /etc/fstab
Craig
On Wed, 30 Sep 2009, Craig White wrote:
first...I made a mistake which I would like to correct.
edit /etc/fstab (dangerous) might want to use system tools to do this craig:x:500:500:Craig White:/home/F11/craig:/bin/bash
should have been to edit /etc/passwd
second, there are many good reasons to use uuid in references in /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/grub.conf and some of them are listed here... http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/146951
I read the article. I'd read something similar before. Neither explained the superiority of UUIDs over labels in a small system. One of the responders prefered labels, not device nodes.
this author glosses over the most obvious reason...that an install with Fedora 9 & 11 will leave you with 2 /boot partitions and probably 2 / partitions.
With two installs, I'd better have two / partitions. They happen to be on separate disks. IIRC their labels are ide-slash and sata-slash .
I am not exactly sure why you bothered asking the list about all of this if you are determined to do symbolic links and the old style labels.
To get this answer:
but the answer to your last question...No, boot sequence will never over write/change /etc/fstab
I suspect that if you go your route, you will end up with a confused, difficult to maintain, selinux off dual-boot computer but it is your computer and you should do as you please.
but the answer to your last question...No, boot sequence will never over write/change /etc/fstab
Thanks.
Until you suggested it, I would not have thought of using bind instead of a symbolic link. Is bind usually superior a symbolic link or is my situation somehow special?
On Wed, 2009-09-30 at 21:50 -0500, Michael Hennebry wrote:
On Wed, 30 Sep 2009, Craig White wrote:
second, there are many good reasons to use uuid in references in /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/grub.conf and some of them are listed here... http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/146951
I read the article. I'd read something similar before. Neither explained the superiority of UUIDs over labels in a small system. One of the responders prefered labels, not device nodes.
---- what part of unambiguous do you not understand?
get a terminal and type the command 'blkid' you will get a list of devices with their UUID the UUID does not change unless you reformat. ----
this author glosses over the most obvious reason...that an install with Fedora 9 & 11 will leave you with 2 /boot partitions and probably 2 / partitions.
With two installs, I'd better have two / partitions. They happen to be on separate disks. IIRC their labels are ide-slash and sata-slash .
---- It's your system - do what you will. ftr, both ide and sata will appear as a SCSI device to a current Linux kernel ----
Thanks.
Until you suggested it, I would not have thought of using bind instead of a symbolic link. Is bind usually superior a symbolic link or is my situation somehow special?
---- already answered in my first answer
Craig
Michael Hennebry skrev:
I'm dual booting F9 and F11. There is a partition that mounts on F9:/home and on F11:/home. I suspect that my ~/.* directories are stepping on each other. I want to reorganize so that the to-be-former home partition mounts on F9:/homes and on F11:/homes. F9:/home would be a symbolic link to /homes/F9. F11:/home would be a symbolic link to /homes/F11. User fred would have home directories with canonical names /homes/F9/fred and /homes/F11/fred . Each would have a symbolic link to /homes/fred, his old home directory.
I have a somewhat similar setup between F10 and CentOS 5.3. I don'tknow if it fits your situation, but this is what I do:
- a /home partition for each system (root:root) (5 GB in my case) - contains home directories for each user (as normal) - a /home/homework common partition (root:root) (60 GB) - each user has a directory with the same name and uid:gid as in /home - each user has a trash directory with the same uid:gid as above The name of the trash dir has to be ".Trash-<uid number>" - in /home/<username>: symlink named "work" pointing to /home/homework/<username>/work This is where all work files go, so you would move them here from your old home.
You have to enter uid and gid numbers yourself when you create users on the second system to make sure they are the same on both systems.
I did it this way because I was uncertain about whether apps' config files might have changed between Fedora Core 6 (which CentOS 5.3 is inderectly based on) and F10. This means that changes made in an app on F10 (which I normally use) will not be made on CentOS, unless I move that app's config files to /home/homework/<username>/ and use symlinks to point to them from ~ . (I did that for Thunderbird and Firefox, though it wasn't straightforward in those cases.)
Another thing to remember is that devices might be named differently. F9 and F11 should probably not be a problem, but the two DVD-RW readers I have, one IDE and one SATA, was named differently on my system. I had to create symlinks in ~ (.idecdburner and .satacdburner) pointing to the correct device names and configure apps to use those.
If you want all the .-files and .-directories to be shared between the two OS instances, this would probably be an impractical way to go about it, but if the work files are what you try to share, it might be worth consideration.
Frode Petersen
On Thu, 1 Oct 2009, Frode Petersen wrote:
Michael Hennebry skrev:
I'm dual booting F9 and F11. There is a partition that mounts on F9:/home and on F11:/home. I suspect that my ~/.* directories are stepping on each other. I want to reorganize so that the to-be-former home partition mounts on F9:/homes and on F11:/homes. F9:/home would be a symbolic link to /homes/F9. F11:/home would be a symbolic link to /homes/F11. User fred would have home directories with canonical names /homes/F9/fred and /homes/F11/fred . Each would have a symbolic link to /homes/fred, his old home directory.
I have a somewhat similar setup between F10 and CentOS 5.3. I don'tknow if it fits your situation, but this is what I do:
- a /home partition for each system (root:root) (5 GB in my case)
- contains home directories for each user (as normal)
- a /home/homework common partition (root:root) (60 GB)
- each user has a directory with the same name and uid:gid as in /home
- each user has a trash directory with the same uid:gid as above The name of the trash dir has to be ".Trash-<uid number>"
- in /home/<username>: symlink named "work" pointing to /home/homework/<username>/work This is where all work files go, so you would move them here from your old home.
I'm trying to do roughly the same thing. There are two important differences: I'm not starting from scratch. The split is mostly to deal with configuration conflicts. To that end, I am not going to repartition. The common /home partition will become the common /homes partition, to which will be added directories F9 and F11. F9 and F11 will contain user home directories. With bind or symbolic links, F9 and F11 will also have the name /home .
You have to enter uid and gid numbers yourself when you create users on the second system to make sure they are the same on both systems.
Another thing to remember is that devices might be named differently. F9 and F11 should probably not be a problem, but the two DVD-RW readers I have, one IDE and one SATA, was named differently on my system. I had to create symlinks in ~ (.idecdburner and .satacdburner) pointing to the correct device names and configure apps to use those.
If you want all the .-files and .-directories to be shared between the two OS instances, this would probably be an impractical way to go about it, but if
It's what I am trying to avoid.
the work files are what you try to share, it might be worth consideration.
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Craig White -
Frode Petersen -
Michael Hennebry