[NTLUG:Discuss] Re: Multiple Linux'es (Was: Umm, I'm in need...)

[Mark Bickel]

> Anyway -- In order to have multi Linuxes/ Linuces/ whatever on my
> machine, is it_necessary_that I have, for each of the 2 distros, discrete
> partitions for usr, var, home & local; or can I just, as to only the 2nd
> distro, have all that lumped into a single root partition -- keeping the
> main distro with just a root and var (and the shared swap and boot), per
> my prior post?  (The idea being that the 2nd distro is more of an
> experiment than anything else, likely to be wiped out by the next,
> sparkly new version of SuSE/ Storm/ RHat/ whatever, that comes along).


The following directories are not shareable (or I would advise against
it).

/ 
/bin
/dev *
/etc
/lib
/mnt *
/proc *
/sbin
/usr
/var/run
/var/lock
/var/log

* These are special cases. They should not be treated as normal
directories.

The following are definitely shareable

swap
/home

The following MAY be shareable, but consider your configuration
carefully
and what, where and how you install optional software packages that you
might want to share across multiple distros w/o storing multiple copies.
I'm thinking of big bloatware apps like StarOffice, ApplixWare,
Netscape.

/boot
/opt
/root
/tmp
/usr/local
/var/mail
/var/cache/man
/var/cache/fonts
/var/spool/news

Final hints: Symbolic links can really help here, if used properly.
If you use packages (.rpm or .deb) you may have to run installs
multiple times (once from each distro) to keep package databases
in sync. Kind of a PITA, and I'm interested to hear sugestions here.
Seriously suggest you read the Filesystem Standard Hierarchy document
for a better understanding of some of the issues involved w/ sharing
filesystems across multiple machines or configurations (OS distros).
Ref: FHS v. 2.1 by Daniel Quinlan, April 12, 2000.

Cheers,
Mark.Bickel at ericsson.ciom
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