Trying to set same /home to multiple distros

**user1397** · November 27th, 2014

Ok well it seems like the consensus is to create a separate partition such as /data for your personal files, while keeping all of the /home partitions in each respective distro's root partition, because of all of the hidden program folders that reside within each /home/user folder, so that no conflicts arise.

I shall apply this

**user1397** · November 30th, 2014

SO...I made a /MyFiles partition to be my data partition and I reinstalled kubuntu first to see what would happen. What's weird now is that my user does not have write permissions to /MyFiles and so I cannot copy my backup onto that partition.

I clearly missed some minute detail or does this happen to eveyone and then they have to change the permissions right after the install is complete?

Thanks.

****EDIT: Nevermind!!! Figured it out, just opened dolphin as root, right click > properties > permissions tab, and changed all permissions to read and write for everyone.

**Bucky Ball** · November 30th, 2014

Great news! Did you create symlinks to the folders in the /Myfiles partition?

You can create the regular folders there, like Videos, Music, Documents, etc., delete the ones in you /home folder in / and create symlinks to there to the folders in the /Myfiles partition, if that makes sense, as suggested previously.

This way, when you install another OS on another partition, you do the same, then whichever OS you boot into, they are all accessing the same folders in /Myfiles via the symlinks in their /home folders.

Good luck.

**oldfred** · November 30th, 2014

I do not know if I mention it above int previous posts, but I also move some of the hidden folders with lots of data.
So my Firefox & Thunderbird profiles, my kmymoney files, and maybe a few others when they start having lots of data.

I actually started sharing Firefox & Thunderbird when first using Ubuntu and knew XP. I knew I wanted to convert but it was a bit of a process. And my wife & I share a computer so she wanted to check email or go on Internet and I had to reboot into XP (3 to 5 minutes

) . So when I found you could move profiles & share them it allowed me to make much greater progress on learning Ubuntu. Back then the shared data partition was NTFS, but now everything is in ext4 Linux formatted partition.
I also the just copy profiles with rsync to my laptop when traveling & back when I return. Laptop is configured similarly so I just copy to data partition on laptop.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_profile_folder
http://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/Profiles
http://www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/profile

**user1397** · December 1st, 2014

Originally Posted by oldfred

I do not know if I mention it above int previous posts, but I also move some of the hidden folders with lots of data.
So my Firefox & Thunderbird profiles, my kmymoney files, and maybe a few others when they start having lots of data.

I actually started sharing Firefox & Thunderbird when first using Ubuntu and knew XP. I knew I wanted to convert but it was a bit of a process. And my wife & I share a computer so she wanted to check email or go on Internet and I had to reboot into XP (3 to 5 minutes

) . So when I found you could move profiles & share them it allowed me to make much greater progress on learning Ubuntu. Back then the shared data partition was NTFS, but now everything is in ext4 Linux formatted partition.
I also the just copy profiles with rsync to my laptop when traveling & back when I return. Laptop is configured similarly so I just copy to data partition on laptop.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_profile_folder
http://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/Profiles
http://www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/profile

thanks oldfred, I'll keep that in mind although I think I'm ok with not sharing hidden folders and profiles for now.

Originally Posted by Bucky Ball

Great news! Did you create symlinks to the folders in the /Myfiles partition?

You can create the regular folders there, like Videos, Music, Documents, etc., delete the ones in you /home folder in / and create symlinks to there to the folders in the /Myfiles partition, if that makes sense, as suggested previously.

This way, when you install another OS on another partition, you do the same, then whichever OS you boot into, they are all accessing the same folders in /Myfiles via the symlinks in their /home folders.

Good luck.

I haven't created symlinks yet, although now I see it's pretty simple with Dolphin, so I'm probably gonna do that once I finish writing this post hehe. I was going to ask though, did I set my permissions up correctly? I'll attach a screenshot of the permissions tab of the /myfiles directory. I just want to make sure my permissions are considered "safe" or perhaps some of it is unnecessary?

**nerdtron** · December 5th, 2014

I just want to make sure my permissions are considered "safe" or perhaps some of it is unnecessary?

Regarding permissions, I see that the owner is root and everyone can read/write on the that folder you are showing on your screenshot. This can be a security problem and it is not recommended. However if this is just a home computer and is mostly shared among other user, you still can leave it as it is.

The default permissions for normal folders are owned by the current user, and only the owner can read/write while other are read-only.

**oldfred** · December 5th, 2014

I have not used dolphin to set permissions. And only occasionally will use Naulitus to set a file as executable.

If data partition is Linux, you can manually set owership & permissions. Example below uses /mnt/data, use your actual mount point.
sudo chmod -R a+rwX,o-w /mnt/data
# Note that the -R is recursion and everything is changed, do NOT run on any system partitions.
#All directories will be 775.
#All files will be 664 except those that were set as executable to begin with.
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /mnt/data

With NTFS you can only set ownership & permissions when you mount it. Auto mount of external drives usually gives users full access.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1983336
Mount & edit fstab from user Morbius1 in Post # 6 - suggest using templates instead.
Good example of manually mounting, except I prefer /mnt/xxx as location to mount to.

**user1397** · December 6th, 2014

Originally Posted by nerdtron

Regarding permissions, I see that the owner is root and everyone can read/write on the that folder you are showing on your screenshot. This can be a security problem and it is not recommended. However if this is just a home computer and is mostly shared among other user, you still can leave it as it is.

The default permissions for normal folders are owned by the current user, and only the owner can read/write while other are read-only.

Oh ok thanks.

Originally Posted by oldfred

I have not used dolphin to set permissions. And only occasionally will use Naulitus to set a file as executable.

If data partition is Linux, you can manually set owership & permissions. Example below uses /mnt/data, use your actual mount point.
sudo chmod -R a+rwX,o-w /mnt/data
# Note that the -R is recursion and everything is changed, do NOT run on any system partitions.
#All directories will be 775.
#All files will be 664 except those that were set as executable to begin with.
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /mnt/data

With NTFS you can only set ownership & permissions when you mount it. Auto mount of external drives usually gives users full access.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1983336
Mount & edit fstab from user Morbius1 in Post # 6 - suggest using templates instead.
Good example of manually mounting, except I prefer /mnt/xxx as location to mount to.

Thanks oldfred, I used those commands to set the new permissions for my data partition. Remarking this thread as solved.