satelliteuser083 Posted December 30, 2007 Report Share Posted December 30, 2007 I have several mandy-partitions on the same physical HDD (2005LE, 2006, 2007) and each has a large amount of personal data in its /home directory, all essentially the same. Is it possible to place this data in a separate partition (/opt or /usr spring to mind) which can be accessed by all versions; this would save a lot of disk-space and time following installation of the next mandy (2008, for example). Thanks. [moved from Software by spinynorman] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dude67 Posted December 30, 2007 Report Share Posted December 30, 2007 One possibility would be to purchase an external USB or NAS HDD for your data. Have you not considered that option? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard1098 Posted December 30, 2007 Report Share Posted December 30, 2007 I have several mandy-partitions on the same physical HDD (2005LE, 2006, 2007) and each has a large amount of personal data in its /home directory, all essentially the same. Is it possible to place this data in a separate partition (/opt or /usr spring to mind) which can be accessed by all versions; this would save a lot of disk-space and time following installation of the next mandy (2008, for example). Thanks. Why not create share folders in each distribution, then modify /etc/fstab to mount the /home from the other distributions at those shared folders. I currently do that to allow file transfer between SUSE 10.3 and Mdv 2007.1 loaded on the same PC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jkerr82508 Posted December 30, 2007 Report Share Posted December 30, 2007 Provided it's just data and not configuration or settings files that you want to "share", then an approach that I (and many others) use is to create a separate "data" partition, for documents, pictures, music etc.. This partition can then be mounted in any linux system running on your machine. It also means that if, for any reason, you need to format your /home partition, your data will be safe. Jim Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AussieJohn Posted December 31, 2007 Report Share Posted December 31, 2007 That is the smart thinking Jim. I do just that except I call it zstore (z so it is the very last Directory in the list and therefore easy to spot) Have done it that way for years. Happy New Year 2008 to everyone. Cheers. John. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coverup Posted December 31, 2007 Report Share Posted December 31, 2007 (edited) Provided it's just data and not configuration or settings files that you want to "share", then an approach that I (and many others) use is to create a separate "data" partition, for documents, pictures, music etc.. This partition can then be mounted in any linux system running on your machine. It also means that if, for any reason, you need to format your /home partition, your data will be safe. Jim Create a separate "data" partition, as jkerr82508 suggested. Also, create a mount point in /home/username and mount the data partition to that mountpoint, using MCC or manually edit /etc/fstab. Your shared files will now be in /home/username/data; filebrowsing is easier that way since you always begin with a homedir. Sharing all of /home/username may not be a good idea because config files for GNOME, KDE, and other software storred in /home/username may have a slightly different structure in different distros/versions; they may not always be compatible. Edited December 31, 2007 by coverup Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
satelliteuser083 Posted December 31, 2007 Author Report Share Posted December 31, 2007 Many thanks for all of your replies, the one I've decided to go for is the partition with a mount point in /home/username. Now comes the tricky bit, the dreaded syntax. B) I assume that the option in MCC is "Mount points" followed by "Setting up sharing of your HD partitions"; I've selected "Custom" but am now unsure whether to select SMB or NFS. Could one of you help me further? Many thanks, again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coverup Posted January 1, 2008 Report Share Posted January 1, 2008 Many thanks for all of your replies, the one I've decided to go for is the partition with a mount point in /home/username. Now comes the tricky bit, the dreaded syntax. B) I assume that the option in MCC is "Mount points" followed by "Setting up sharing of your HD partitions"; I've selected "Custom" but am now unsure whether to select SMB or NFS. Could one of you help me further? Many thanks, again. Neither. SMB is for cross platform sharing between Windows and Linux, and NFS is for sharing over the network. You just need to unmount the data partition and re-mount it giving the user read/write/execute user privileges. Assuming that the created partition /dev/hda11 was mounted during boot to the mountpoint /data, unmount it and re-mount using these commands, as root (change username, group name as relevant): # unmount /data # mkdir /home/username/newmountpoint # chown username:groupname /home/username/newmountpoint # mount /dev/hda11 /home/username/newmountpoint setuid=username,setgid=groupname,exec,users,codepage=850 0 0 (the last command must be a single line). Check if you can read and write to this partition. If everything is Ok, then add the last line (without the first word "mount ") to /etc/fstab. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
satelliteuser083 Posted January 1, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 1, 2008 (edited) Well, I followed your instructions (as root) # umount zstore # mkdir /home/lawrence/zqstore # chown lawrence:lawrence /home/lawrence/zqstore # mount /dev/hda7 /home/lawrence/zqstore setuid=lawrence,setgid=lawrence,exec,users,codepage=850 0 0 but the system refused to mount the partition. It IS possible to mount it, with mount /dev/hda7 /home/lawrence/zqstore but the owner remains root, of course. :huh: The current /etc/fstab line is /dev/hda7 /zstore ext3 defaults 1 2 It's probably something small, but I can't see what I'm doing wrong. Edited January 1, 2008 by satelliteuser083 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AussieJohn Posted January 1, 2008 Report Share Posted January 1, 2008 (edited) I see in the copied data that you have named the Extra Directory as zqstore (neat compliment. Thanks) but in the bottom one it shows a zstore That is likely your problem because it is looking for zstore but it is not there although zqstore is. Hope this helps. John. A Happy New Year to you and all. Edited January 1, 2008 by AussieJohn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
satelliteuser083 Posted January 1, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 1, 2008 (edited) Thanks John, but I rather think that the problem lies somewhere in the section setuid=lawrence,setgid=lawrence,exec,users,codepage=850 0 0 because the partition CAN be mounted if I remove that from the mount command. The directory names ARE probably confusingly similar; :unsure: zstore is the mount-point given to the partition when I formatted it (which is a directory in the main file-structure (correct??) and where it is mounted at boot - according to KDiskFree, anyway) and zqstore is the mount-point which I created in my own /home/username directory, where I WANT to mount it. Alle Klarheiten beseitigt??? B) Happy New Year to all Edited January 1, 2008 by satelliteuser083 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coverup Posted January 1, 2008 Report Share Posted January 1, 2008 Thanks John, but I rather think that the problem lies somewhere in the section setuid=lawrence,setgid=lawrence,exec,users,codepage=850 0 0 because the partition CAN be mounted if I remove that from the mount command. The directory names ARE probably confusingly similar; :unsure: zstore is the mount-point given to the partition when I formatted it (which is a directory in the main file-structure (correct??) and where it is mounted at boot - according to KDiskFree, anyway) and zqstore is the mount-point which I created in my own /home/username directory, where I WANT to mount it. Alle Klarheiten beseitigt??? B) Happy New Year to all What if you use uid=lawrence,gid=lawrence? You need to give the user lawrence read-write permissions. It is time for man mount :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
satelliteuser083 Posted January 1, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 1, 2008 No luck, I'm afraid, with "uid=..." and "gid=..."; still no mount. And as for man mount, I imagine that Mandarin-Chinese is probably easier. :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
satelliteuser083 Posted January 1, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 1, 2008 (edited) Well, it certainly LOOKS like a syntax problem, because when I do the following (as root) # umount zstore # mount /dev/hda7 /home/lawrence/zqstore # chown lawrence:lawrence /home/lawrence/zqstore everything is as I want it to be, i.e. the partition appears in my /home/lawrence directory AND is (so far.....) read/writeable by me . All I need now is the correct fstab command-line :unsure: Edited January 1, 2008 by satelliteuser083 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coverup Posted January 1, 2008 Report Share Posted January 1, 2008 You cannot run chown to change ownership in fstab, that's why I suggested uid, gid which do exactly that. But you can add the above commands to /etc/rc.local. They will be run on every boot, so you will get the same result as if you were running them from command line. It may also be that codepage=850 0 0 was the reason you could nbot mount the partition. I copied that command from my fstab, and was to mount FAT32 buffer parttion, codepage=850 0 0 was required for that. Try removing that fragment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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