I'm dual-booting with Debian and Manjaro on separate partitions. Each has its own /home partition as well. Rather than trying to keep the files coordinated between the 2 /home partitions, I would like to create a third storage partition that I can access from each OS. That means each OS would have to mount the common partition. I'd like to create symlinks in each OS to that storage partition, but I have a couple of questions before I screw things up:
1. can that separate partition be the target of multiple mounts and links to different OS's at the same time? Obviously, only one OS would be functional at a time, but would multiple links cause a problem? Using one mount point and sharing it with each OS shouldn't be a problem if only one OS is mounting it at a time. Is the same true of symlinks?
2. I believe you can't create a symlink that has a source that's already in the source directory (such as Documents in /home/username). If I create a new source file in the link such as /home/username/link_to_Documents, will it automatically add that file to my /home directory?
3. I've seen several comments cautioning about creating a common storage partition. There can be conflicts over file permissions, configuration files, and more. How manageable are these, and is there an increased risk here because while Debian is Debian-based, Manjaro is Arch-based? An alternative to my plan may be to re-install Manjaro as a virtual machine, but would this Deb-Arch conflict still apply there if I try to access a storage partition in Debian from the VM Manjaro?
Any advice for a cautious newbie who's tired of re-installing OS's when things go awry? Thanks!
1. can that separate partition be the target of multiple mounts and links to different OS's at the same time? Obviously, only one OS would be functional at a time, but would multiple links cause a problem? Using one mount point and sharing it with each OS shouldn't be a problem if only one OS is mounting it at a time. Is the same true of symlinks?
2. I believe you can't create a symlink that has a source that's already in the source directory (such as Documents in /home/username). If I create a new source file in the link such as /home/username/link_to_Documents, will it automatically add that file to my /home directory?
3. I've seen several comments cautioning about creating a common storage partition. There can be conflicts over file permissions, configuration files, and more. How manageable are these, and is there an increased risk here because while Debian is Debian-based, Manjaro is Arch-based? An alternative to my plan may be to re-install Manjaro as a virtual machine, but would this Deb-Arch conflict still apply there if I try to access a storage partition in Debian from the VM Manjaro?
Any advice for a cautious newbie who's tired of re-installing OS's when things go awry? Thanks!
Statistics: Posted by Redrock3 — 2024-04-13 17:10 — Replies 2 — Views 44