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    Making /home == WinXP home dir

    I currently dual-boot Kubuntu and WinXP, using both to a fair degree for different tasks. I'm planning on buying a laptop soon and want, if possible, a seamless way to access personal documents and files from either OS. (So I'll have the option to create whatever partitions are needed, and muck about a bit without risk of data loss).

    Currently, I have symlinks in my /home directory to the folders under the c:\Docs-n-settings\username\documents, which is where everything is stored in XP. (Kub automounts the NTFS partition at /windows, so the symlinks are to /windows/Documents....). This works OK, but it'd be nice if what I was seeing under /home was ACTUALLY the same folders as I see in XP; that is, if I had an extra partition which linux always mounts at /home, and under windows, appears as D: and is set up with the Docs-n-settings hierarchy on it.

    a) This would require that extra partition to be either NTFS or FAT, so XP can read it. I understand that writing to NTFS is stable enough now (NTFS-3g) for this to work.
    b) This would mean that both OSes would be writing to this partition, alternately, depending on which I'm booted in.

    So, QUESTIONS: does anyone know if b) will cause it to balls up? I have a sneaky suspicion that I'm missing something! Has anyone experimented with integrating the user directories in XP (or Vista) and *buntu (or *nix more generally?) Is there a better solution that I've not noticed?

    #2
    Re: Making /home == WinXP home dir

    unix/linux users' home directories can be any directory.
    it doesn't have to be /home/username.
    so, from the linux point of view, i don't see any troubles.
    you would have to check how it reacts to directory/file names with blanks in them.
    but other than that...

    however...
    i haven't got a clue as to how windoze work.
    so, i don't know what would windoze do.

    btw, it is my understanding that ext3 be available under windoze.
    not that it changes anything.
    but since we're talking interoperability...

    hth

    gnu/linux is not windoze

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      #3
      Re: Making /home == WinXP home dir

      I did this before, but instead of using NTFS/FAT, I used ext2 for the /home filesystem and installed the Ext2 IFS for Windows (http://www.fs-driver.org/) so XP could read the file system.

      This worked quite well, although the Windows driver tended to leave things in need of an FSCK if the system crashed. That required a boot back to Linux before the Windows side could read the filesystem again.

      The other thing I found was that it was better to put the actual home directory in a subdirectory of /home/user, rather than using /home/user itself. This is because Linux peppers /home/user with lots of dotfiles that show up in the XP file browser. So I created /home/user/data where all my files went, pointed "My Documents" there, and everything was groovy.

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        #4
        Re: Making /home == WinXP home dir

        Thanks for the suggestions, guys. I'll try to remember to let this thread know when I've actually got it all working

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          #5
          Re: Making /home == WinXP home dir

          that'd be kind of you, yeah...
          gnu/linux is not windoze

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            #6
            Re: Making /home == WinXP home dir

            I have all of my data on a separate /data partition with /home on another separate partition.

            Works just fine.
            The only profiles I needed from xp (now vm machine) were FF and TB profiles.
            So i just recreated them for FF and TB in Kubuntu and pointed my email configs on xp and Kubuntu to my email folder in /data.

            I don't know why you would want xp to access your /home partition but it is doable
            HP Pavilion dv6 core i7 (Main)
            4 GB Ram
            Kubuntu 18.10

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              #7
              Re: Making /home == WinXP home dir

              I don't know why you would want xp to access your /home partition but it is doable
              I don't, specifically. I just want one common resource on the hard drive that I read and write personal files to, that is *transparently* both /home/[user] (or subdirectory thereof) on Linux and c:\users\[user] on Windows (that would be the Vista path, I figure I'll probably not be able to avoid getting Vista if I'm buying a laptop now ).

              Symlinks work fine, for almost everything. The failing point is this: if I have /home/[user]/symlink --> /windows/[windows-hierarchy]/[user]/myfolder and, from inside /home/[user]/symlink, do cp FILE .. the FILE ends up in /windows/[windows-hierarchy]/[user] rather than /home/[user].

              I do this quite a lot...

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                #8
                Re: Making /home == WinXP home dir

                Of course you could do it the other way. XP allows you to change the location of 'My Documents'. I just point my documents at my Linux home folder which is shared using Samba

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