How best to set up a separate /home partition, and pros/cons

[Felix Miata]

On 2012-11-25 22:53 (GMT-0500) Bill Stanley composed:

> You probably can have links to your user data.  Create documents,

Not probably can, just can.

> pictures, music, downloads etc directories somewhere where all of the
> distros can access it.  Then have links to these directories and keep
> all of your user data there.  Of course, you have to get the file
> permissions right.

Much easier with only one shared /home partition. Put Data, Music, Videos, 
etc. dirs in home's root, and share the same GID for all users and data that 
need that sharing regardless of distro and release. Keep the settings 
separated by using a different UID for $USERNAME for each distro and release. 
Finally, either set umask 002 in /etc/profile.local, and/or use access 
control lists. Some apps won't respect the umask, so on occasion you may need 
to fix perms on files written by such apps, chmodding regular files from the 
typical 644 -> rw-r--r-- to 664 -> rw-rw-r-- and dirs to g+w.

For simply testing a release, there's little need to have a separate /home. 
If the test turns into a non-testing installation, add the separate /home to 
its fstab when the need arises.
-- 
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  Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

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