posible success sharing /home between 2 OSs

[miKeyBabid]

I just installed 10.04.
Had a little trouble logging in but recovery mode > startx seemed to do the trick.

However, since I went after a multi boot alongside slackware with both OSs sharing /home I seem to have a few problems.

I'll outline my install first :

Partitioned /dev/hda1 2GB swap
/dev/hda2 20 GB / for Kubuntu
/dev/hda3 20 GB / for Slackware
/dev/hda4 rest of 400 GB for home.

Installed Slackware's root and swap first with lilo on the root partition.
Next I installed Kubuntu with Grub2 to the MBR.

Then rebooted, chose Kubuntu (slackware is available in the list as well) and created a group id to which I joined my user id.
Then kdesudo kate /etc/fstab to auto mount home and add "grpid" to the end of the /dev/hda4 (the /home partition).

However, when I opened /etc/fstab I had no entry for /dev/hda4 or the Slackware partition...

I've obviously messed something simple up but I've no idea where to start. I tried

fdisk -lu

which I thought would print out a list of my partitions but nothing seemed to happen.

Here's a copy of my /etc/fstab

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier
# for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name
# devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0
# / was on /dev/sda2 during installation
UUID=91469099-9f4e-4a49-a681-78f2693ca354 / ext3 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=46122171-e822-486c-bf30-2baad8a12335 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0

thanks

mike

[miKeyBabid]

Re: missing partitions in /etc/fstab

ok, sorted some things out. realised

fdisk -lu

wasn't working because I wasn't working as root.

I decided to reinstall because everything was uber slow compared to working in Slackware.

Install went fine this time. KDE is still a little slow but I'll work on that tomorrow.

I might let this slide for now and start again tomorrow with a fresh install of slackware, and then update grub and see if I that doesn't sort things out...

Mike

[miKeyBabid]

uncertain success sharing /home between 2 OSs

I recently posted asking for some information about how to have two root partitions for Kubuntu 10.04 and Slackware 13 with both OSs sharing the same /home partition.

I've spent the last couple of days getting it working (I'm a slow learner) and it seems to have worked. I thought I'd maybe report back on what I did in case people don't share my opinion that it's a success ...

1. I started out partitioning my HD into a swap partition, 2 / partions for each respective OS, and a large /home partition.

2. installed Slackware and mounted / , swap, and /home to their partitions, installing Lilo to the / partition.

3. Did the same for Kubuntu, installing Grub to the MBR.

4. Booted into Slackware and created a new User with a UID of 1000. Then created a new Group with GID of 1001 and added the new User to the new Group. I then made the new User's default group the recently created Group with GID 1001.

5. kdesudo /etc/fstab and changed the /home line to

auto,users,exec,grpid 0 0

6. Logged in to Kubuntu and followed the same procedure (although I obviously didn't have to create a new user as in Slackware).

I seem to have rwx permissions and, as yet, no permission errors. My only concern is that I can't seem to add my new Group as the default group for my Kubuntu user. I can add the new Group as a secondary group, however.

Otherwise, all is working perfectly. After a second installation of Kubuntu (the first installation was incredibly slow -- mostlikely my fault) everything is impressively speedy (both the boot and operations within the OS).

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Mike

[oshunluvr]

Re: posible success sharing /home between 2 OSs

Two ways to do it - GUI or command line.

GUI: System Settings > Advnaced > User Management > select user > Modify > Primary Group > select group desired and click OK and exit

Command Line: usermod -a -g groupID userID

[miKeyBabid]

Re: posible success sharing /home between 2 OSs

great thanks. I'd tried newgrp <groupID> which didn't seem to work.

However, by groupID do you mean the name of the group or the name of the group plus the GID ? I'm assuming it's the first one but best to ask first I guess...

Cheers,

Mike

[miKeyBabid]

Re: posible success sharing /home between 2 OSs

ok, I just read the man page and answered my question.

However, when I run the command

usermod -a -g <groupid> <userid>

I get a message stating that the -a is only available with -G, which I then tried withe the message :

usermod: cannot lock /etc/passwd; try again later.

which I'm thinking might be related to the fact that I've already changed my /etc/fstab to a specific mount option.

should I change /etc/fstab back to it's default setting ?

Thanks

[oshunluvr]

Re: posible success sharing /home between 2 OSs

by groupID I mean the name of the group as opposed to the number, which I would note as GID. So userID is the user's name.

Sorry - you're right the -a is only valid for the -G option - which adds a group to the users. The -g rearranges the group list and moves the one you've selected to primary. If you use -G with usermod, it will remove all groups other than the one you've selected unless you also use the -a switch which preserves current groups. In either case, the group must exist prior to the usermod command.

As far as the cannot lock the passwd error - I doubt that's related to fstab entries. More likely you're doing usermod to an account without using "sudo". Group information is contained in the passwd file and can only be edited by superuser.

If you need to create a new group, the command is groupadd groupID then you can add the group to your user(s) with the usermod command.

[miKeyBabid]

Re: posible success sharing /home between 2 OSs

yeah, tried with sudo (sorry should have included that) and just found myself back at a new prompt line...
assume that is normal ?

Thanks heaps for your help. It's appreciated.

Mike

[oshunluvr]

Re: posible success sharing /home between 2 OSs

Yeah - the default output if there are no errors is no output

You can check your results with

groups

for the current user or for other users

groups userID

The first group in the list is the primary group.

[miKeyBabid]

Re: posible success sharing /home between 2 OSs

ok, well I get

mike@mike:~$ groups
mike adm dialout cdrom plugdev lpadmin admin sambashare homegroup
mike@mike:~$ groups mike
mike : mike adm dialout cdrom plugdev lpadmin admin sambashare homegroup

homegroup is the new group I set up, which is at the end of the list...

Maybe I managed to mess it up...

I ran

usermod -a -G homegroup mike

cheers.

[oshunluvr]

Re: posible success sharing /home between 2 OSs

Ok Now do

sudo usermod -g homegroup mike

and you should get

mike homegroup adm dialout cdrom plugdev lpadmin admin sambashare

[oshunluvr]

Re: posible success sharing /home between 2 OSs

Also - you have to log out and back in for group changes to take effect...

[miKeyBabid]

Re: possible success sharing /home between 2 OSs

sweet ! many thanks (again).