Arch Linux

jeffreyldavidson

Member

Registered: 2008-09-05

Posts: 47

New User Partition Setup - Solved

Hello, I am new to Arch. I want to install on a laptop with a single hard drive and dual boot with Ubuntu. What you reccomend for a partition scheme. I have 2 gig of ram. Also, I can't figure out how to set grub to boot for both. Thanks!

Last edited by jeffreyldavidson (2008-09-06 02:43:39)

freigeist

Member

From: Cologne, Germany

Registered: 2006-07-14

Posts: 191

Re: New User Partition Setup - Solved

I would recommend using a 3 partition scheme:

- Ext3/JFS for / of Arch Linux (sda1) Recommended size: 10-20 GB
- Ext3/JFS for / of Ubuntu (sda2) Recommended size: 10-20 GB
- Ext3/JFS for /home for BOTH (sda3)

I don't know if it is really a good idea to share the SAME username on both installations. Another possible choice would be:

- Ext3/JFS for / of Arch Linux (sda1) Recommended size: 10-20 GB
- Ext3/JFS for / of Ubuntu (sda2) Recommended size: 10-20 GB
- Ext3/JFS for /home for Arch Linux (sda3)
- Ext3/JFS for /home for Ubuntu (sda4)
- Ext3/JFS for /data for BOTH (sda5)

Regarding GRUB: In short, you have to copy the kernel entries of one linux installation (found in /boot/grub/menu.lst) to the /boot/grub/menu.lst of the other installation.

For more information regarding GRUB: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Gru … ux_distros
For more information regarding Partition Scheme: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beg … ard_Drives

Last edited by freigeist (2008-09-05 18:49:31)

---

Elfenbeinturm.cc
a metaphysical space of solitude and sanctity: http://www.elfenbeinturm.cc

robertp

Member

From: Warszawa, Poland

Registered: 2007-09-11

Posts: 123

Re: New User Partition Setup - Solved

Partition scheme with shared /home is not a good idea. You may run into compatibility problems with configuration files stored in /home.

Use scheme with separate /home partitions.

Profjim

Member

From: NYC

Registered: 2008-03-24

Posts: 658

Re: New User Partition Setup - Solved

Or you could use a single /home partitition, and just use different usernames on the two systems. That way, you don't have to worry about whether you made this home partition too small and that one too big.

Whether you do that or not, you can create symlinks from the one user's home to the other for big directories that you know it's fine to share. E.g. a directory of media files. Or your Maildir. To do this, it's very useful to have the numerical userIDs be the same on the two systems.

E.g., the first user you create on arch will be uid=1000, gid=100. Let this be user name "alpha". The first user you create on Ubuntu will be uid=1000, gid=1000. Let this be user name "beta". Then alpha's home directory will be at /home/alpha, and beta's will be at /home/beta, and it'll be OK because they don't overlap. You might have a big directory of music at /home/alpha/music. You can create a symlink to that in /home/beta with:

ln -s /home/alpha/music /home/beta/music

And beta will still own all the files when you boot into Ubuntu because they're still uid=1000.

With this kind of setup, Arch and Ubuntu will probably keep overwriting the gids (when Arch modifies a file, it will make it gid=100, when Ubuntu does it it will make it gid=1000). Fixing that would require less simple steps. But you might get by with just ignoring it.

Last edited by Profjim (2008-09-06 13:10:39)