Conflicting /usr & /etc files while installing Fedora 15 and Scientific Linux 6.1

astroboy2000ir · 08-09-2011, 07:09 AM

Hi everyone,
Until some time ago I had a dual Windows 7 and Fedora operating system, then I completely moved to Fedora. Recently I have become interested in Scientific Linux and wanted to install it besides my Fedora. I took a back up of all my data and formatted my HDD for a clean install of both of them. This is what I did:

First I installed Scientific Linux with these partitions (contents of /etc/fstab):

Code:

# /etc/fstab
# Created by anaconda on Tue Aug  9 19:24:59 2011
#
# Accessible filesystems, by reference, are maintained under '/dev/disk'
# See man pages fstab(5), findfs(8), mount(8) and/or blkid(8) for more info
#
UUID=9f5def10-799b-44a8-8478-c2ae3687d97e /                       ext4    defaults        1 1
UUID=0939b58b-bfaf-41ed-87f3-23fdd1c94579 /FedoraRoot             ext4    defaults        1 2
UUID=2c0be06d-4e35-44fe-9775-51321f3cdcfb /PrimaryPartition1      ext4    defaults        1 2
UUID=9d24b4e1-d755-4d7f-a19e-326591f67f4f /PrimaryPartition2      ext4    defaults        1 2
UUID=a4c18eba-b79c-45cc-aa81-6252d36644cf /boot                   ext4    defaults        1 2
UUID=845791f6-5108-4dec-9e5f-7767b080c0c8 /home                   ext4    defaults        1 2
UUID=da1240c4-b697-4202-af81-0aff3be6be47 /tmp                    ext4    defaults        1 2
UUID=a62c9bd1-6a10-4c5a-b0a9-3dc8cd9a8729 /var                    ext4    defaults        1 2
UUID=60fac535-42f8-4dcb-9909-51668da177b6 swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
tmpfs                   /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
devpts                  /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
sysfs                   /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
proc                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0

Then I went on to install Fedora 15; I kept the same primary and extended partitions but only changed the names of "/FedoraRoot" to "/" and "/" to "/SLRoot" in the above list while installing Fedora. I also chose the boot directory of Fedora to be /dev/sda1/ which I wanted to be the /boot file for both systems while I had chosen the boot file for Scientific Linux to be "/dev/sda".

Everything went well until the final step of copying the files an error came that some of files that Fedora wanted to install in /usr/share, /usr/lib64, /usr/bin, /etc/system..., /etc/issue..., /etc/redhat-release... and /etc/rpm are already present in the Scientific Linux format and so there is a conflict and it has to terminate!!! I must have made some strange mistakes in the definitions, could you please guide me?

I actually wanted to share the /boot, /swap, /var and /temp partitions between the two distros, shouldn't the /usr and /etc that I hadn't defined have gone into the root partition of each distro? and had no conflict? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

acid_kewpie · 08-09-2011, 07:32 AM

Don't share filesystems like this. You can often have a /home between two systems, but don't do ther rest of it. /boot actually is not part of a booting operating system, you don't even need it when mounted, so you can put a kernel image from one system onto another distor's /boot partition and update grub accordingly, but such a level of integration as you seem to want is only going to cause you more problems.

Having said all that though, your desire is NOT to share /usr, /etc and so on, so how, if that's what you're defining, could you possibly be having those conflicts? You must be mounting the other installs partitions incorrectly in the first place.

astroboy2000ir · 08-09-2011, 07:45 AM

Dear acid_kewpie
Thanks for the fast reply. This is exactly my question; while I have not attempted to share /usr or /etc why was there an error in the final step of installation on these directories?
All afternoon I have been busy reading different recommendations on file system management, all have said what to do, but none (that I saw at least!) had said how to do it!!!!!
As I understood I should choose the first system's boot to be on /dev/sda1 (where the /boot is located) and the second system which is my final system to boot from /dev/sda. I understand what you mean by "so you can put a kernel image from one system onto another distor's /boot partition and update grub accordingly", but I don't understand how I can do that, could you be alittle more specific on how I can such a thing? I just want to have these two distributions installed on my computer together; my HDD is 1TeraByte and I have no limitations. Although I understand the theory behind all the explanations in the webpages, I don't understand how to apply them.
By the way this is how I have arranged the "sda"s:

/dev/sda1: /boot
/dev/sda2: /PrimaryPartition1 (left free if I might need it later)
/dev/sda3: /PrimaryPartition2 (same as above)
/dev/sda4 (extended)
/dev/sda5: /home (I hope to share between both systems)
/dev/sda6: / (for scientific linux)
/dev/sda7: / (for Fedora)
/dev/sda8: /var (I hope to share, I don't know if I should)
/dev/sda9: /tmp (like above)
/dev/sda10: swap