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Multiple Boot Partition Tips

Yesterday, I had a chance to install ubuntu 9.10 'karmic koala' on my laptop. Having read several online reviews made me rethink my strategy. Previously, whenever there's new ubuntu release, I will always do fresh install. Now, several minor but annoying bug appeared in reviews where I had similar hardware . Kind of annoying, but, I'll still try it.

To overcome the problem, I decided to create another partition to be used for karmic, 12G is enough for me, as I have my data on other partition. Previously, I setup my partition like this:

/	28G	root partition
/home	38G	home data where I store my files
/mix/DATA1	92G	multipurpose partition
/mix/DATA2	136G	multipurpose partition

Now that I need to create new partition for karmic, I resize /mix/DATA2 and created a 12G empty partition. So, now the layout is like this:

/	12G	The newly created partition
/data	38G	The /home from previous installation
/jaunty	28G	The / (root) from previous installation
/mix/DATA1	92G	Same as previous installation
/mix/DATA2	136G	Same as previous installation

You might ask, why should I mount my /home as /data? Well, the answer is simple. It's just so that I can load into my new OS with fresh settings. If I mount my /home as /home, I will be logged in with whatever setting I have there in my homedir. Because, I don't want to create new user. There's a trick here with homedir and username. While using different OS version, I want to be able edit and or working on my data in the usual way (read: without changing path, etc). With same username, this present no problem at all. However, with different homedir location, this produce a little problem. I have to change the way I work, from /home/silent/wherever/the/data/is/ to /data/silent/wherever/the/data/is/. To fix it? simply executing ln -s solve the problem .

ln -s is a way to create symbolic link, or shortcut if you came from windows world. Do man ln to know more.

Now, everytime I work on each OS, the other one will always receive the updated file version. Simple trick that worked perfectly!