Anybody got some tips on running multiple distros of Linux? I want to give RedHat 7.1 a 5 GB (less 100 MB) partition, install Mandrake 8.0 on another 5 GB (less 100 MB) partition, and have the two distros share a 5 GB /home partition and a 200 MB /var/www/html partition.

Since I have a 20 GB hdb, that leaves 5 GB free--I mean to install BeOS there.

First of all: Can it work? Can Mandrake and RedHat comfortably share a /home partition, assuming I use 2 different usernames (to prevent directory ownership conflicts)? How about /var/www/html? I know LILO likes to mount filesystems and then search for the kernel--that means if I use RedHat's LILO, then I'll have to have it look in /mnt/Mandrake/boot for vmlinuz instead of /boot--Is that doable? Is 5 GB enough to comfortably run a big distro like Mandrake or RedHat? (currently, Redhat occupies all 20 GB of my hard drive) Is BeOS going to cause me trouble?

Secondly: I read in a magazine that the 2 partitions safe to not-format when doing a clean install of a UNIX system (i.e., upgrading big-jump distributions, such as replacing RedHat 6.2 with 7.1), are /home and /usr/local--Does this mean that RedHat and Mandrake can share /usr/local as well? It would save me installing the same software on both distros, I think.

i know you can have two different linux OS's with a dual boot but not sure or never heard of them sharing a /home directory or whatever. you shouldn't have any problems having BeOS on there as well either as far as I know of... but maybe someone else has heard of two different distro's sharing directories.
though i have had redhat and slackware dual booting before... they each had all their own /boot and / directories...etc, sharing a swap space.

>>First of all: Can it work?
--Yes, I have RH 6.2 and Drake 8 on the same drive, and they play nicely together. I'm only sharing swap, though.

>>Can Mandrake and RedHat comfortably share a
/home partition, assuming I use 2 different
usernames (to prevent directory ownership conflicts)?
--Hmm...interesting thought. If /home had it's own partition, I suppose it might work.

>>How about /var/www/html?
--Sorry- no idea.

>>I know LILO likes to mount filesystems and then search for the kernel--that means if I use RedHat's LILO, then I'll have to have it look in /mnt/Mandrake/boot for vmlinuz instead of /boot--Is that doable?
-- I had Redhat installed for a while (with lilo on the MBR) before I installed Drake. When I installed Drake, I installed its version of lilo over RH's, edited the new lilo.conf to include a stanza for RH, moved my RH kernel into Mandrake's /boot, and did /sbin/lilo to update the changes. That way, lilo was always looking at Drake's /boot for the kernels. The reason this worked is that the actual kernels used by each distro had different names; I just made sure to enter the correct kernel name in each corresponding distro's stanza in lilo.conf.



>>Is 5 GB enough to comfortably run a big distro >>like Mandrake or RedHat?
Yes, for a workstation install that will be enough, just be careful how you size your partitions if you decide to go with multiple partitions.

>>Is BeOS going to cause me trouble?
I know others have done it, but I haven't myself.

>>I read in a magazine that the 2 partitions safe >>to not-format when doing a clean install of a >>UNIX system...are /home and /usr/local
That could be true, I suppose, but I don't think it would necessarilly work if what you're instralling is another distro.

>>Does this mean that RedHat and Mandrake can >>share /usr/local as well?
See above.

Good luck, it can't hurt to try. As long as you've got good backups, that is

Thanks! I'll try that. Although I'll start with a symbolic link in /boot instead of moving the kernel itself.

I've only heard of distros sharing swap partitions. If you try to install a second distro to the shared /home partition, it will write what it wants to that partition overwriting what's there.

As for booting the distros, you could install let's say rh7.1 first and have it put lilo in the mbr. Then install mandrake and have it install its boot loader in its root ' / ' partition. Then all you have to do is edit rh7.1 lilo.conf to point to mandrake. Like this:

other=/dev/hda? #This is root partition of mandrake
label=MD8
table=/dev/hda


And for each OS that you add, just edit the rh7.1 lilo.conf file.

Here's an idea I had that may be a way to share a /home. Install rh7.1 with three partitions. /, swap, and /home. Then install mandrake but only create a root partition for it. When you install, tell it to use the root partition that you made for it and tell it to use rh7.1 swap partition. OK, this may be the part that won't work. Edit mandrake's fstab file to mount the rh7.1 /home partition in mandrake's /home directory. Then reboot and see what happens. If there is anything in mandrake's /home directory it will become invisible and inaccessable as long as the partition is mounted. This may be a bad idea that I had, but it might work if you like experimenting.

I would not recommend using the same /home dir for both distros, at least not with the same username.

I have experimented with using 2 distros on one HD and have found that it can be quite hard to get them to share anything.

Be especially weary of mixing a debian distro with an rpm.

To be honest, it is possible to have 2 distros, but they really need their own space, apart from the swap.

Oh, I definitely wouldn't use the same username; Mandrake will let me use 'citizenbleys', but that's too long for Red Hat; Hence I have to use just 'bleys' instead.

Pardon my ignorance but why can't you share the /home partition with the same user name?

If the user name, UID, group and GID were the same in both OS's what would go wrong?

I agree. As long as your apps, that are on both partitions, use the same versions, and you are using the same UID/GID there's not much that can go wrong...

And if beos had ext2 support (which I dont know if it does) you could (with some light hacking) share your /home under Beos

Linux rules, you know ...

True, if EVERYTHING was the same then yes it wouldn't matter, but have you ever found a distro using exactly the same progs?

But what would be the point if everything was the same. Surely the point of having a different distro is for variety?

Why would the version of the apps have anything to do with the /home partitions and/or home directories?

I'm not sure why, but it does.

Creating a user "bleys" under Mandrake 7.2 wound up chowning my /home/bleys directory under redhat to "502", which prevented me from logging in as bleys. I had to log in as root (I guess I could have done it from Mandrake, too) in order to get my directory back.

Mind you, chown -R bleys.bleys /home/bleys isn't really a difficult fix, either.

Wow that's bizarre. I am going to do some testing and see what happens between Mandrake 8.0 and RH 7.1.

What did you use to create the users? I usually use linuxconf or webmin. I wonder if they will automatically 'fix' the permissions.