Re: installing multuple distributions

Yuri Csapo <[email protected]> Fri, 06 Feb 2009 19:00:27 -0700
Newsgroups org.kernel.vger.linux-admin
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Pol,

Yes, it would certainly work. The important files to look at are, as you 
said, /etc/passwd and /etc/group; but also /etc/shadow. I don't think 
it's a good idea to make them the same because different distros will 
have different ways of doing things and different required 
administrative users and groups; things like lp, admin, etc. All you 
need to do is make sure that your own user entry (and those of other 
users of the system) has the same UID and belongs to the same primary 
group, which should have the same GID. Also, I'd make the passwords the 
same across the distros just to keep sane... Good luck!

Yuri

Pol wrote:
> <posted & mailed>
> 
> I would like to test several distributions (say
> kubuntu,mandriva,suse,arklinux) without changing my working place, when
> switching from one to the other. 
> So / /boot /usr /var of each distribution should be on the same partition,
> while the /home partition should be shared among all.
> Do you think that share /home would give rise to any inconsistencies?
> 
> Probably i should make sure that /etc/passwd and /etc/groups are the same in
> all distributions.
> Do you think it would work?
> 
> Thank you
> Pol
> 
>  
> 
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-- 
Yuri Csapo
Academic Computing & Networking
Colorado School of Mines
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