[plug] two flavours of linux AND more newbie questions (still trying, still learning)

[Ari Finander]

/boot was the easiest to iron out...just had to boot from the boot disk into 
RH, uninstall lilo then reinstall the redhat version with the /etc/lilo.conf 
updated  to allow me to boot either distro with one copy of lilo from one 
partition as the distros had different naming conventions at for the tail end 
of the vmlinuz-... name (the lilo version that was reported with I tried to 
set up lilo to triple boot was later than the one in RH causing a fatal error 
with the /sbin/lilo command, I'm assuming Debian did this as it was the last 
of the 3 OSs installed).  I don't know how to get two versions of linux plus 
windows 98SE to be bootable under lilo without sharing /boot as a separate 
artition, or at least copying the vmlinuz... from debian's /boot to redhat's 
/boot (or vice versa).

Regarding /usr/local...only root can actually write to this directory...which 
means any software that I want all users on my system to be able to use (which 
with my computer turns out to be virtually all the software) has to be 
installed by the superuser, yes?  A while back on this list everyone was 
telling me not to install software as the superuser (I'm not sure if any 
reason was given for this caution, and it didn't seem to make sense to me 
seeing as only superuser has write privs to /usr/local).  What are your 
thoughts on this?

So far I'll be sharing swap (already) and /home (again, already doing this).  
If /usr has turned out this badly (X lags and performs kinda oddly sometimes) 
should I expect bad things from sharing /sbin too?  I'm actually making these 
partitions as logical drives on an extended partition, and I'm assigning their 
sizes arbitrarilly as I have so very little experience with linux I'm not sure 
how big to make them (I'd love some input here, too).  I make the swap 
partition 256mb (I have 192mb RAM, and want to go up to 256, so when I upgrade 
I won't have to change the partition size for swap) and the /boot partition 
100mb which should be generous even with two kernels, and I've made / smaller 
than /usr as I think I'll probably be instally a lot of big things like 
staroffice and java jdk into /usr/local.  (on a side note: when I update an 
rpm say for security updates, where do these files usually go?  /usr? /sbin?).

I haven't compared space savings yet.  I just want to see if I can do this 
first, especially because when I download an rpm for a program that I want to 
make available under both distros I'd rather not have to do the .tar.gz then 
compile thingy, which I've no idea how to do yet for anything.  I take it from 
your response that /lib and /sbin prolly won't be good things to share for the 
same reasons /usr is not a good share thingy?

TIA

Ari

>===== Original Message From Mike Holland <myk at golden.wattle.id.au> =====
>On Mon, 14 May 2001, Ari Finander wrote:
>
>> I'm trying to get RedHat7.0 and Debian 2.2r2 to run on the same HDD
>
>> having trouble with each other sharing the swap partition, /home,
>> /boot, and /usr.  The trouble comes from different libraries and
>
>Sharing /usr !!!??  Oh my gawd.  You wont have two distros,
>you'll have Ari-ware distro - a total dogs breakfast :)
>
>Out of curiosity, how much disk space did that "save"? ie what was the
>overlap? (du, compared to separate installs)
>
>> versions of programs in /lib and /sbin.  I'm wondering which
>> partitions they should share to minimise space, and which ones should
>> be separate?  Obviously they'll be sharing /home, /boot, and the swap
>> partition....which others would you recommend?  Why or why not?
>
>You might share /usr/local, for "manually" installed programs, though
>thats still asking for a little trouble.
>home and swap, naturally.
>  Why /boot? It'd be a big hassle to avoid name conflicts there.
>
>--
>Mike Holland  <mike at golden.wattle.id.au>
>                          --==--