heather1113 Posted October 30, 2003 Report Share Posted October 30, 2003 I have a 11 gb NTFS partition with WinXP on it and a 2.8 gb fat32 partition that I was using to share between WinXP and Mandrake but I am thinking of getting rid of Windows and trying out some different distros, namely Debian. My last holdouts were good replacements for my current bible software and Microsoft Money but I've been using Bibletime 1.3 and Gnucash so I really don't need Windows. The question(s) I have is there anything special I should know to do? Can they share a home partition and if so how? Is it possible to install one distro on the 2.8 gb partition and another one on the 11 gb one? Will the NTFS formatted partition pose a problem? There's probably a lot more I should know but this is all I can think of. I have only been back using Linux for about 6 months now and I still don't know all the places to go for good information on things like this so if you could post some links or tell me where to go to find out more I'd really appreciate it. Thank you very much in advance, Heather Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kurtjo Posted October 31, 2003 Report Share Posted October 31, 2003 I've done a fair amount of partitioning and mixing distros with windows in the past few years, but never tried Debian. What I can give you is: Can they share a home partition and if so how? I would not advise this. Different distros put some config files in different places and also configure things differently. You should be able to get by with something like one new partition for /boot for your new distro (shouldn't need more than 50MB) and one for / (use the rest left over from 2.8G after creating the /boot). You can share your existing linux swap partition so don't make another one of those. Personally I use ext3 for the /boot partition and reiser for the /, but ext3 works well for both too - maybe with less hassle. Same stuff applies to the 11G partition. How difficult this really is will depend on the distro you are installing (how friendly the installer is about partitioning). Getting rid of the NTFS partition should be easy with most distros. The question(s) I have is there anything special I should know to do? Make sure you have a working boot floppy that can boot into your Mandrake system before starting all this. That way if something goes wrong, at least you will still be able to access your working linux system! You can do this in the Boot /Drakfloppy menu under the Mandrake Control Center. Most distros should update your bootloader (lilo?) properly, but there could always be a problem here. There's probably a lot more I should know but this is all I can think of. I have only been back using Linux for about 6 months now and I still don't know all the places to go for good information on things like this so if you could post some links or tell me where to go to find out more I'd really appreciate it. One of the best places to look is in the How-To's that may already be installed on your system. Of course typing your question in a search engine will get you more info than you can imagine, also. Good luck, Kurt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
polemicz Posted October 31, 2003 Report Share Posted October 31, 2003 Mandrake and Debian use different UID's for users: Mandrake starting at UID 501 and Debian at 1000, so this will be a problem. You can, however, get around that with permissions, but you can have some bookkeeping headaches with this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted November 3, 2003 Report Share Posted November 3, 2003 You can use the same /home partition, just use different user names. Also, as said, users will get different UIDs; if you would use the same user name, this can get nasty. Normally, the user accounts in /home will not get deleted/overwritten when not formatting the partition upon install. The big reason for me not to use the exact same useraccount on various linuxes is not that the place for the conffiles can differ, it is that they may be the same but not in the same syntax; imagine that one distro uses version x of your mailreader, and another uses version y, and somehow stuff is not completely compatible, it may not be that much fun to find you can't access your mail anymore. (Note: worst case example, not that this has ever happened to me) I usually just create a new user, different username or different partition; on my test partition for my alternative, test, system, I just don't create a separate /home, and mount the normal /home under /althome or so. Then I usually copy the maildirs and other stuff over, to see if all works. (if the new user has a different UID, I just chown and chgrp to fix it; man chown, man chgrp If that is ok, I do (not logged on as a user, and as root) mv /home/myuser /home/myuser.old and ln -s /althome/myuser /home/myuser and then all uses the regular configs etc from my normal user account. Mind you, I do this when going from one version of Mdk to the next; it may be wise to make symlinks for all subdirs etc in /home/myuser to /althome/myuser for anything that you know and checked will work; with different versions of KDE I don't know if you want to have the same .kde on both systems.. Furthermore, I agree with most if not all that has been said; esp. the floppy to get into your own standard system (actually, I do it the other way around, I use the floppy purely for the second system; needs being careful at install time; if the install still overwrites the MBR where my standard bootloader is, I know I can easily fix it with knoppix or so, but if you wouldn't know how to do that, do make the bootflop for your main stable system!). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted November 3, 2003 Report Share Posted November 3, 2003 Here's a how-to on running 2 linux distros... http://www.mandrakeusers.org/index.php?showtopic=5082 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VeeDubb Posted November 3, 2003 Report Share Posted November 3, 2003 As a side, since your main question is pretty well answered, for Bible software, you should look into the sword project. It's what I use and there's versions for just about every platform. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heather1113 Posted November 3, 2003 Author Report Share Posted November 3, 2003 Thank You for all the responses. Sorry it took so long for me to write back but evidently my thread got renamed, I'm not complaining though it's a much better title. I think I'm going to hold of and read a lot more before getting rid of windows and trying out another Linux distro. I don't mind losing windows but I'm still a little nervous about this whole process of running dual distros. The running it seems pretty easy and straightforward in how different distros run (uids home partition etc.) but after my last encounter with installing multiple distros/systems http://www.mandrakeusers.org/index.php?sho...wtopic=7560&hl= I'm a little nervous. My other problem is I have Mandrake 9.2 and it won't let me make a boot floppy from MCC so I need to look for a fix/work around for that first. Thank you again for all the info and links it gives me some good stuff to read. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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