Sharing Swap and Home

sidethink · 20 Jan 2009 at 10:34

I'm something of a Linux noob but for a variety of reasons I'd like to dual boot one of my work laptops with OpenSolaris and OpenSuse.

Is there any way I can use just one partition for Home and one for Swap for both OSes? I realise that the initial setup will be a little fiddly but the convenience of having my Home file in one place would be great.

Any advice would be great...

eXor · 20 Jan 2009 at 10:49

Sharing swap is fine.

Sharing home may cause problems. Applications write user configuration files there. Two instances of, say, Gnome writing to the same directory may result in files being overwritten, inadvertently.

1. You could install with different usernames and end up with e.g. /home/sidethink and /home/knihtedis ( Make sure the second installer doesn't format the home partition! Just choose the mountpoint and keep existing data. )

or if, for some reason, you want to use the same username :

2. You could install Solaris, make a directory called home-solaris, create a symbolic link, copy all files across ( probably best to do it with the OS not running ). Repeat for Suse.

home -----> home-solaris

home -----> home-opensuse

Then, if you wish, a symbolic link out for common data.

home-solaris/data ---> common
home-suse/data ------> common

Any reason why you don't want multiple home partitions?

sidethink · 20 Jan 2009 at 11:52

I just presumed it would be more convenient for things that I download or save etc.

How hard would it be to setup a folder location that I can direct all my saved files to for both OSes?

Dj_Jestar · 20 Jan 2009 at 12:39

I honestly wouldn't bother tbh. The two are going to be so achingly similar I'd just pick one.

eXor · 20 Jan 2009 at 13:04

sidethink said:
How hard would it be to setup a folder location that I can direct all my saved files to for both OSes?

If you go with different usernames :

1. You will have /home/user1 and /home/user2.

2. You then create /home/user1/savedFiles

3. Create a symbolic link like so :

Code:

ln -s /home/user1/savedFiles /home/user2/savedFiles

Now you can test by listing :

Code:

ls -lha /home/user2/savedFiles

total 8.0K
drwxr-xr-x 2 exor exor 4.0K 2009-01-20 12:51 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 exor exor 4.0K 2009-01-20 12:43 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 exor exor 32 2009-01-20 12:45 /home/user2/savedFiles -> /home/user1/savedFiles

Code:

ls -lha /home/user2/savedFiles/

total 8.0K
drwxr-xr-x 2 exor exor 4.0K 2009-01-20 12:51 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 exor exor 4.0K 2009-01-20 12:43 ..

If you delete /home/user2/savedFiles, just that symbolic link disappears.
If you delete /home/user2/savedFiles/*, everything in /home/user1/savedFiles disappears.
If you delete /home/user1/savedFiles/*, everything in /home/user1/savedFiles disappears and your symbolic link, /home/user2/savedFiles, points to.... nothing.

Bit tricky to wrap your head around, at first.

sidethink · 20 Jan 2009 at 13:07

Dj_Jestar said:
I honestly wouldn't bother tbh. The two are going to be so achingly similar I'd just pick one.

Thats not the point - I would like to evaluate both and make a decision for myself.

Thanks for the other pointers though.

BigglesPiP · 20 Jan 2009 at 13:34

I'd do it eXor's way.

Sharing a single SWAP is standard practice, you don't need to do anything, both OSs will just see the swap.

Sharing home but with 2 different users may sound like a half measure, but it will mean you can easily get files from the other OS as the same /home is always there and mounted, but the separate users will be essential for the .*rc files.

While you're at it, search google for OpenS*, there must be more OSs out there beginning with OpenS that you can have.

Dj_Jestar · 20 Jan 2009 at 14:57

BigglesPiP said:
While you're at it, search google for OpenS*, there must be more OSs out there beginning with OpenS that you can have.

.walls · 21 Jan 2009 at 20:58

It's pointless doing that. One of the best features of *Solaris is zfs... which linux can't read.

sidethink · 21 Jan 2009 at 23:19

Another random comment - I do understand that ZFS is a nice feature but its hardly the 'must have' to host my Home partition.

Better for a storage target or virtualization which this evaluation is not about - thanks for the 'advice' though...

Dj_Jestar · 22 Jan 2009 at 00:03

.walls said:
It's pointless doing that. One of the best features of *Solaris is zfs... which linux can't read.

not necessarily.. /home could be mounted on a reiser (or other) partion, whilst the rest of the solaris install is on zfs.

.walls · 24 Jan 2009 at 15:12

sidethink said:
Another random comment - I do understand that ZFS is a nice feature but its hardly the 'must have' to host my Home partition.

Hardly a random comment. You post on an internet forum asking for advice and I gave my opinion - what else did you expect?!

thanks for the 'advice' though...

"meh" I'll know better next time than waste my time.

Dj_Jestar said:
not necessarily.. /home could be mounted on a reiser (or other) partion, whilst the rest of the solaris install is on zfs.

AFAIK, Solraris doesn't have resier support.