How to share a common partition as home

[Gerry Tool]

Parameshwara Bhat wrote:

>
> Hello list,
>
> I try different distros of Linux on different partitions from time to  
> time. I want to move all my /home folders to a common partition so 
> that  across all distros I can share it by mounting on home. When I 
> implemented  it,I faced a problem. users do not get write permission 
> on this  partition  in spite of specific option to that effect in fstab.
>
> /dev/hdb6            /home                ext3        
> defaults,users,acl,user_xattr        1 2
>
> I get the same error in all distributions. I cannot launch DM in user  
> account as there is no write permission available.
>
> Could somebody point out where is the mistake ?
>
> Thanking in advance,
>
> Paramehswara Bhat
>
On a typical system, /home is used for user configuration directories 
and for user data directories.  Each distribution has its own take on 
configuration, so sharing configurations from system to system is not a 
good idea.

Instead of putting your user data in /home, create a separate partition 
and call it something like /data where you will put all 
non-configuration type data such as word processing files, etc.  This 
can be shared between your various distributions, provided the userid 
and groupid is the same on these systems.  If you have a system where 
userid, groupid are different, you can create a group on that system 
with the id used on the other systems and make yourself a member of that 
group on that system.  You may have to change the group permissions on 
your /data partition to 775 to be able to modify files in that partition.

Hope this helps.

Gerry Tool