Jeffrey Lapinski
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What is the best way to install multiple distributions AND set up a shared /home?
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Jeffrey Lapinski
Active Member
In my research I am finding that it is not recommended to share /home and when I think about it I can understand why. How would you partition for say 3 /, 3 /home, and 1 ESP? My question is do they need to be in a specific order? ESP, /, /home, /, /home, /, /home?
G'day Mate 
Hate to break it to you but what you are describing (in #2) is not logical. It indicates that you are in need of a deeper understanding of the differences between a Home partition and a folder known as small h home. That is, /home.
Take a look at this from my MJRO Cinnamon and see if you follow what I am showing there
SCREENSHOT 1
You already have a /home folder in each and every one of your installed 3 Distros (Manjaro?). If you were simply to cd to that folder ie
and try to do anything it would require the use of sudo, or elevated privileges. However, that /home folder, in each case, has a subfolder, likely jlap4 so it is /home/jlap4 , and its contents can be accessed, read and written to by you the User jlap4.
Take a look at this old forum thread from Ubuntu and see if you follow Answer 1 and come back.
https://askubuntu.com/questions/104496/difference-between-home-and-home
There is absolutely no point to setting up a Home partition for each and every one of your Distros on the same drive or on multiple drives. If you were to do so, you would set up one only and have all Distros share it.
The time to set up a dedicated and shared Home partition is with a blank drive. Install Distro 1, if need be, with manual partitioning (or "something else"), stipulate a Home partition and it size, and follow all other steps to install. Then with Distros 2 to x, point them in the install process to use Distro 1's Home as their home (but do not reformat or you will lose data generated in Distro 1).
Achieving what you might be seeking after 3 Distros are already in place is cumbersome, but not impossible. Take a read of this
https://www.howtogeek.com/116742/how-to-create-a-separate-home-partition-after-installing-ubuntu/
You would have to follow that 3 times, one for each Distro, in regards to the folder contents to new partition part. If you did use that process, replace "gksu gedit" with "sudo nano".
I cannot comment on its efficacy, as I have not done it and likely never will. I run 60 - 80 Distros with no Home partition.
Gotta run
Wizard
Hate to break it to you but what you are describing (in #2) is not logical. It indicates that you are in need of a deeper understanding of the differences between a Home partition and a folder known as small h home. That is, /home.
Take a look at this from my MJRO Cinnamon and see if you follow what I am showing there
SCREENSHOT 1
You already have a /home folder in each and every one of your installed 3 Distros (Manjaro?). If you were simply to cd to that folder ie
Code:
cd /homeand try to do anything it would require the use of sudo, or elevated privileges. However, that /home folder, in each case, has a subfolder, likely jlap4 so it is /home/jlap4 , and its contents can be accessed, read and written to by you the User jlap4.
Take a look at this old forum thread from Ubuntu and see if you follow Answer 1 and come back.
https://askubuntu.com/questions/104496/difference-between-home-and-home
There is absolutely no point to setting up a Home partition for each and every one of your Distros on the same drive or on multiple drives. If you were to do so, you would set up one only and have all Distros share it.
The time to set up a dedicated and shared Home partition is with a blank drive. Install Distro 1, if need be, with manual partitioning (or "something else"), stipulate a Home partition and it size, and follow all other steps to install. Then with Distros 2 to x, point them in the install process to use Distro 1's Home as their home (but do not reformat or you will lose data generated in Distro 1).
Achieving what you might be seeking after 3 Distros are already in place is cumbersome, but not impossible. Take a read of this
https://www.howtogeek.com/116742/how-to-create-a-separate-home-partition-after-installing-ubuntu/
You would have to follow that 3 times, one for each Distro, in regards to the folder contents to new partition part. If you did use that process, replace "gksu gedit" with "sudo nano".
I cannot comment on its efficacy, as I have not done it and likely never will. I run 60 - 80 Distros with no Home partition.
Gotta run
Wizard
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Jeffrey Lapinski
Active Member
My mistake (on terminology) between home folder and partition. Actually I do know they are different demons! I will read through the links you sent, thank you!
I haven’t gone and mucked around with anything so I still only have 1 distro (MJRO Cinnamon). All I did was reinstall MJRO Cinnamon with separate / and home partitions (/dev/sdb2 and /dev/sdb3) I don’t understand why my 30 GB / filled up so quickly!
Unlike my prior adventures I’m sticking to your 1 month minimum with a distro advice before jumping!
I haven’t gone and mucked around with anything so I still only have 1 distro (MJRO Cinnamon). All I did was reinstall MJRO Cinnamon with separate / and home partitions (/dev/sdb2 and /dev/sdb3) I don’t understand why my 30 GB / filled up so quickly!
Unlike my prior adventures I’m sticking to your 1 month minimum with a distro advice before jumping!
Last edited:
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Jeffrey Lapinski
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Jeffrey Lapinski
Active Member
I almost forgot to say G'day to you as well!G'day Mate
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Jeffrey Lapinski
Active Member
Is it obvious how to do this from the installer or is this something that needs to be done on the CLI?
G'day Mate
Nothing is blindingly obvious where Calamares is concerned. Manjaro prior to the 17 'Gellivara' series used to have 3 options with installer
- Calamares
- Thus v0.9 and
- CLI
Have a look and see if you follow, it is quite old, but very simple to follow.
http://linuxbsdos.com/2016/11/07/ho...-windows-10-on-a-computer-with-uefi-firmware/
This was found with a Google on the words
how install manjaro linux with "home partition"
Using the quotes means "must include" but it does not always work very well.
So if you are starting from a blank drive, and using Manual Partitioning, set up your ESP (boot/efi), then / (Root, your choice in size), and then either the remainder of the unallocated space, or a size determined by you, as the Home partition.
SCREENSHOT 2
This shot from that article.
Where it has mount point, and the dropdown arrow, if /home is not there as a choice, you can likely enter it manually.
When you are installing Distros 2 to x, your Home partition on Distro 1 should be visible in the available partitions listed. So you would click that partition and follow whatever steps might be open to you to assign it as the (shared) Home partition for each subsequent Distro.
As I have mentioned, I can't tell you blow by blow because I have not ever used it (Home partition, on any Distro) and am not about to start.
One thing you might consider, is on your HDD (1TB?), if you have a Data partition with no data that needs saving to elsewhere - rename that Home, and then point all Distros installed on the SSD to that HDD Home partition.
Cheers
Wizard
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Jeffrey Lapinski
Active Member
Does Manjaro require a separate /boot/efi partition for each drive if there is a ssd and an hdd? I had Manjaro kde on the ssd and wanted to put Manjaro xfce on the hdd but there was no option in the installer to use the /boot/efi on the ssd for both.
No. Nor does any other Linux Distro that I am familiar with.
(& G'day again
. Fancy meeting you here)If you think of it in terms of what you have learned through using GParted - you can access your SSD /dev/sdb with it, also your HDD /dev/sda.
Linux installers, in at least three (3) stages, make use of a package known as os-prober (which also kicks in when we update-grub). The 2nd and 3rd instances of its running we see as eg "looking for other operating systems" and then nearing the finish with "installing bootloader".
However the first time it runs is before we get to the choice of manual partitioning, erasing the disk and installing, installing alongside your current OS/OSes &c. So as part of that, Linux already knows where (in a UEFI-GPT environment) your ESP is, that is, /boot/efi .
Did you pull back from the install of Xfce or pursue it to completion?
If Linux cannot find an ESP, it will prompt you to specify one.
Currently, I have 3 Manjaro on the Dell rig - Xfce, Cinnamon and Deepin. One each on /dev/sda, /dev/sdb and /dev/sdc, where the latter is the Western Digital My Book 4 TB external HDD. All 3 of these drives are visible every time I install.
Currently I have the WD My Book one with its own ESP on the drive (but shared with a bunch of other Linux) and the other 2 Manjaro work off the ESP on the SSD.
They could just as easily all three work off the one ESP, but I have one on the WD so I can unplug it and take it elsewhere.
Questions?
Wiz
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Jeffrey Lapinski
Active Member
Funny how that happened!?!? I like the new picture by the way!(& G'day again
That is what I thought. I just ran into a weird situation when I tried to install a 2nd Manjaro. The installer never prompted me to choose the location of the bootloader. At the top of the box (I'm sorry I don't have a screenshot) there is a drop down box that allows for changing the drive and the left of the drop down is a spot that reads "efi" I assumed that I was supposed to choose the drive that has the ESP partition. I did that and both attempts I get an error message that I did not designate a boot partition and the system may not boot properly. What happens is I never get the Grub2 menu and the last distro loaded automatically boots.
I will try again and snap a few pictures.
See above
That was the odd thing is it never specifically asked me to choose. Now, I am loading 18.0 as opposed to the 17 series. I don't know if that is an issue.
Also check that the ESP on the first Distro is kosher in that in GParted, it should have flags of boot, esp at right.
Yeah, that's the sort of prompt I'm talking about. Normally you should be able to "Back" from there and designate if need be.
I am currently conducting an experiment involving moving Distros from my /dev/sda HDD to my /dev/sdc WD My Book so that I can reformat the HDD to MBR temporarily and try a few things. But if need be, I can install a fresh Little Mouse MJRO onto /dev/sda which has its own ESP plus MJRO Deepin, and see if anything is revealed.
Later
Wiz
Yeah, that's the sort of prompt I'm talking about. Normally you should be able to "Back" from there and designate if need be.
I am currently conducting an experiment involving moving Distros from my /dev/sda HDD to my /dev/sdc WD My Book so that I can reformat the HDD to MBR temporarily and try a few things. But if need be, I can install a fresh Little Mouse MJRO onto /dev/sda which has its own ESP plus MJRO Deepin, and see if anything is revealed.
Later
Wiz
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Jeffrey Lapinski
Active Member
Got it! I will check to make sure that is done.
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Jeffrey Lapinski
Active Member
This is how I have the SSD partitioned, I went in with a live USB and changed the flag to boot,esp and then I attempted to install to the HDD I didn't see a choice for designating an efi partition.
That looks fine Mate
I have a few errands to run. When I'm back, I'll take a look at installing a Little Mouse MJRO on my /dev/sdc, perhaps take a vid.
Wiz
I have a few errands to run. When I'm back, I'll take a look at installing a Little Mouse MJRO on my /dev/sdc, perhaps take a vid.
Wiz
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Jeffrey Lapinski
Active Member
It seems that I’ve gotten it to work when installing to the same drive. MJRO xfce 18 & MJRO 17.1 MATE.
Can you run
in both Xfce and MATE and give us the outputs?
BTW if your MATE is up-to-date it will now be a v18 codenamed 'Illyria'. Manjaro works on a Rolling Release model cf a Point Release model such as Ubuntu and Mint &c.
The command
will tell the story. You can Google "linux rolling release point release" to learn more.
Cheers
Wiz
Code:
blkid
#might need a sudo in MJROin both Xfce and MATE and give us the outputs?
BTW if your MATE is up-to-date it will now be a v18 codenamed 'Illyria'. Manjaro works on a Rolling Release model cf a Point Release model such as Ubuntu and Mint &c.
The command
Code:
cat /etc/*releasewill tell the story. You can Google "linux rolling release point release" to learn more.
Cheers
Wiz
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Jeffrey Lapinski
Active Member
Do Manjaro community additions update on the same schedule as the main editions?
I’ll run this in the morning and post. I also got the installer to work on a different machine as well.
No schedule, that is for point releases, they come out when they are ready. Manjaro usually place the two digit year in their release name.
Wiz
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Jeffrey Lapinski
Active Member
I wasn’t sure since Manjaro 18 is still listed as a development release. I have been able to solve my installation issue by the way - ie I figured out my mistake, I wasn’t editing the boot/efi with each new install
