Cloning and Partitions with Ubuntu

[oldfred]

If you in Nautilus turn on show hidden files/folders you will see lots of the configurations, but most do not take much space. Some applications like Firefox & Thunderbird store all there data in the . or hidden folders.

I keep /home inside / (root) and link all my data back into /. I use 25B for most / partitions, but actually use about 9GB. My /home is 2GB (of the 9GB) and 75% of that is .wine as I install the Windows version of Picasa and wine is more difficult to move.

Having two different users and setting permissions for each and shared makes it a bit more complicated & I do not know details.

Splitting home directory discussion and details:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1811198
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1901437
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...hlight=%2Fdata
Link is on move home but see post by bodhi.zazen on data partition #6
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=325048

I jsut use links, but some prefer bind or bindfs.
HowTo: Create shared directory for local users (with bindfs). - sisco311
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1460472

Advantages of bind post 16 - Morbius1
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1896695

I have two data partitions. One still is NTFS from when I dual booted XP and I have not moved that into my Linux partition, yet. I have my Firefox & Thunderbird profiles in the NTFS so I could have the same data in XP & all my Ubuntu installs. I also move some other hidden folders with data to my LInux formated data partition.

You will probably need to plan partitions or folders ownership & permissions, so you can separate your accounts and share some.

Some posts from those that really understand ownership & permissions with multiple users.
Share folder among two users of same PC.- morbius1
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2033060
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1998114
http://content.hccfl.edu/pollock/aun...ermissions.htm
Two users to share music folder - group & permissions -BoneKracker:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1484221
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1488065
All users read/write shared folder - morbius1
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1727396

[newb85]

+1 to Paqman's suggestion of symlinks. If your goal is to keep your users' profiles on the / partition and the data (documents, pictures, music, etc.) on a separate partition, you could do this:

Leave /home as part of the / partition.
Create a /data partition. In /data, create two directories, one for you and one for your wife. Change the ownership of those two directories to the corresponding users. Within those two directories, create directories corresponding to each of the non-hidden directories in the user's home directory.
Replace the non-hidden directories within the users' home directories with symlinks to the corresponding directories on the /data partition.

Thus, it will look like your wife is saving things to her home directory, and in reality, it will be stored on the /data directory.