Dual-booting with other Linuxes; shared data partition

DrKillPatient · 2012-06-20 18:35:31

I've got two entirely-blank 320GB hard drives on my computer, and I'd like to dual-boot Arch and Debian on it (and potentially others later). How should I set up GRUB (or GRUB2-- the wiki says that it's a better option when dual booting with other distros) for each OS in order to have both of them able to boot, as well as retaining the capability of adding other distros? (Assuming that Arch's GRUB(2), not Debian's, will be installed to the MBR.)

In addition, I'd like to keep my config files and data separate (with a shared data partition on HD 2).
- What is the best way to set this up separately from the /home partition, i.e. mount /data on startup and be able to access it quickly from a filemanager or the commandline? I venture a guess that I'd edit /etc/fstab and add a symlink to /data within /home/USERNAME...
- What is the right size for the /home partition in this setup?

A tentative partition scheme is as follows (note that I have 4GB RAM, since that factors into swap size):

HD 1
4GB shared swap partition

256MB ext3 Arch /boot partition
20GB ext4 Arch / partition
? ext4 Arch /home partition *see note above*

256MB ext3 Debian /boot partition
20GB ext4 Debian / partition
? ext4 Debian /home partition *see note above*

(free space)

HD 2
320GB shared ext4 data partition

Last edited by DrKillPatient (2012-06-20 18:38:01)

DSpider · 2012-06-20 19:20:29

A swap partition isn't really necessary with 4 GB RAM. I have 2 GB and everything works fine. You can always use a swapfile. Separate /boot partitions for each distribution is also unecessary. And I'm pretty sure that you can use a single /home partition for both (but with different user folders).

You don't need a symlink for the 320 GB data partition. Fstab can mount it to /media just fine (or wherever you want, but it's usually /media/some_folder/).

If it were me I would probably go with 10 GB Arch, 10 GB Debian, and that's it. But only because I keep software installed to a minimum... No separate /boot or /home. Kinda like I have now. But you're free to do whatever you want. It's your system! If you install KDE and a bunch of games, 10 GB probably won't cut it.

If you're thinking that it's not nearly enough space you may wanna look into LVM, where you can adjust partitions on-the-fly.

Terminator · 2012-06-20 19:26:58

Most of it is a matter of opinion I think, but since I have a similar setup I'll throw in my two cents.

DrKillPatient wrote:

I've got two entirely-blank 320GB hard drives on my computer, and I'd like to dual-boot Arch and Debian on it (and potentially others later). How should I set up GRUB (or GRUB2-- the wiki says that it's a better option when dual booting with other distros) for each OS in order to have both of them able to boot, as well as retaining the capability of adding other distros? (Assuming that Arch's GRUB(2), not Debian's, will be installed to the MBR.)

I use GRUB (legacy). Adding a distro in the grub menu is just a matter of finding the kernel and initram image of the distro and adding an entry. OS's generally either have a fixed location/name for the kernel and image or have a fixed link, so there are no problems on updates. I really don't like GRUB 2 and don't see the point of using it unless you are using something exotic that GRUB doesn't support.

DrKillPatient wrote:

I
In addition, I'd like to keep my config files and data separate (with a shared data partition on HD 2).
- What is the best way to set this up separately from the /home partition, i.e. mount /data on startup and be able to access it quickly from a filemanager or the commandline? I venture a guess that I'd edit /etc/fstab and add a symlink to /data within /home/USERNAME...
- What is the right size for the /home partition in this setup?

I just mount the data partition in /mnt/data and make symlinks from my home partition. In my case the data partition is ntfs, since I also use windows. My home partition contains 1.2 GB, of which 600 MB source code. So if you only keep configs in them it probably won't reach 1 GB.

DrKillPatient wrote:

I
A tentative partition scheme is as follows (note that I have 4GB RAM, since that factors into swap size):
HD 1
4GB shared swap partition
256MB ext3 Arch /boot partition
20GB ext4 Arch / partition
? ext4 Arch /home partition *see note above*
256MB ext3 Debian /boot partition
20GB ext4 Debian / partition
? ext4 Debian /home partition *see note above*

(free space)
HD 2
320GB shared ext4 data partition

In my opinion a seperate boot partition is only useful for the OS of which the bootloader is installed to the MBR.

DrKillPatient · 2012-06-20 20:21:37

Okay, I just installed Arch only, as well as the default GRUB bootloader. However, when I boot, it gets to the BIOS splash screen and, immediately afterwards, hangs with a blinking cursor indefinitely. It never gets to GRUB. What's wrong there?

Last edited by DrKillPatient (2012-06-20 20:21:49)

DSpider · 2012-06-20 20:26:38

That's no longer relevant to this topic. Start a new one.

Edit: Or, you know, search the forums, read the wiki article for GRUB, google it, etc. I'm sure you'll find something.

Last edited by DSpider (2012-06-20 20:29:23)

Terminator · 2012-06-20 23:59:28

You probably didn't install grub to the MBR (i.e. you installed to /dev/sda1 instead of /dev/sda) or something else went wrong during the grub install.

Check the GRUB wiki.

Arch Linux

#1 2012-06-20 18:35:31

Dual-booting with other Linuxes; shared data partition

#2 2012-06-20 19:20:29

Re: Dual-booting with other Linuxes; shared data partition

#3 2012-06-20 19:26:58

Re: Dual-booting with other Linuxes; shared data partition

#4 2012-06-20 20:21:37

Re: Dual-booting with other Linuxes; shared data partition

#5 2012-06-20 20:26:38

Re: Dual-booting with other Linuxes; shared data partition

#6 2012-06-20 23:59:28

Re: Dual-booting with other Linuxes; shared data partition

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