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

[Christopher Browne]

On Fri, 25 Aug 2000 13:31:11 MDT, the world broke into rejoicing as
greenglow484 at juno.com  said:
> On Fri, 25 Aug 2000 09:14:42 -0500 cbbrowne at dantzig.brownes.org writes:
> > On Fri, 25 Aug 2000 08:53:09 MDT, the world broke into rejoicing as
> > greenglow484 at juno.com  said:
> 
> ........snip
> > > 
> > > My Linux partitions are /, /var, /boot and /swap.
> 
> ........snip
> > The way I'd do it would involve having about 10 partitions:
> > /dev/hda1 - root for Mandrake
> > /dev/hda2 - /usr for Mandrake
> > /dev/hda3 - /var for Mandrake
> > /dev/hda4 - root for SuSE
> > /dev/hda5 - /usr for SuSE
> > /dev/hda6 - /var for SuSE
> > /dev/hda7 - /boot, shared by both distributions
> > /dev/hda8 - swap, shared by _both_ distributions
> > /dev/hda9 - /home, shared by _both_ distributions
> > /dev/hda10 - /usr/local, shared by both distributions
> 
> 
> ........snip
> > It's not overly difficult to do; you just have to keep clear in
> > mind which partitions have which roles...
> 
> Chris --
> Thanx!  You're in MDT; hope it's cooler, wherever you are, than it is in
> Dallas today -- forecast 100 here.

Nope, I'm in Dallas.  Upcoming plan: Hyderabad, India.  (I'll probably
miss the November meeting.)  It sure is hot...

> And, BTW, what_is_the plural of "Linux"?  Linuxes? Linuces? Linuxs? Linux
> duo doce? 

Nobody can agree on the pronunciation of "Linux;" the appropriate
pluralization can't be any more tractable...  :-)

> 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).
> 
> And, thus, they really can share the same, single swap partition, with no
> probs, huh?  Thanx again!

How much of the systems are separated to _many_ partitions is your
call.  

I would _strongly urge_ that /home and /usr/local (or some equivalents
thereof) be distinct from the / root partition.  That allows you to 
install afresh without forcibly having to destroy what documents you
have in /home.  It would be a good idea to back up /home anyways, but
if it's distinct, you don't necessarily have to recover the data.

You will _NOT_ be able to share /, /usr, and /var between two
different distributions; they tend to have subtly different ideas of
what goes where, and if things get interspersed, they'll get _very_
confused.

But if you want to lay one of them out as just having a root
partition, with everything sitting on that one filesystem, that
surely _is_ fine.
--
cbbrowne at acm.org - <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
I'm not born again -- my mother got it right the first time.