i am planning to setup 2 distributions of linux in my box ( redhat and debian), is it enough that i have a common partition for swap and /home and seperate /root and /boot. how do i partition this ? can i do this with disk druid.


thanx in advance.

Yes you can do this with disk druid. If you haven't yet, do a search on here for questions on partitioning for this. But to summarize...

You should have 1 common directory for file sharing, some have mentioned making a /data others have said /home. Your choice. Other than that, do not use common directories. Not until you get the hang of having a dual distro system. Then you need to figure out what directories are common between your 2 distros and figure out what files need to be renamed and such. That's why it's a good idea to have just 1 /data shared directory and nothing else, at least for a while.

I would only really make or share a swap, /boot, and a /tmp you could get away with easily to share within distro's.. Then if you wanted like a /data partition where files are stored and kept could be made and shared too.

First you would want to install one distro, maybe Redhat first, use disk druid to partition but if you plan to share the /boot, be sure to back it up elsewhere as if you install Debian, it might overwrite it when installing. Then install Debian, using same swap and /tmp.. etc.. just update your fstab accordingly after your install, and of course add it to your boot loader of choice too..

U can also use ranish for partioning