[CALUG] Looking for advice

[Bryan Smith]

Looks like this didn't go to the list ... (working from phone)

On Thu, Mar 7, 2019 at 4:41 PM Bryan Smith <b.j.smith at ieee.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 6, 2019, 22:20 Howard Bampton <howard.bampton at gmail.com wrote:
>> 95% of the time you can share $HOME.
>
> Yep, I use the same LVM Volume Group (VG) for all distributions, and then create 'f{root, var, tmp**}', 'u{root,var,tmp**}' LVs, along with a shared 'elocal' LV (more on that in a bit).
>
>> I have (admittedly in the UNIX(tm) world or mixing UNIX(tm) and Linux) seen issues with settings for your windowing system being slightly incompatible and causing interesting failure modes.
>
> If the distributions are close in age, there shouldn't be any issues.
>
> But alternatively, I tend to use different Desktop Environments (DEs) for different, major releases.
>
> E.g., GNOME Flashback on RHEL** and Ubuntu LTS**, while LXDE on Fedora.
>
> **NOTE:  I do sometimes load LXDE from 3rd party repos for RHEL.  I've given up on Lubuntu, and just run pure Ubuntu [LTS], whatever it's DE is, because while Lubuntu works for LXDE alone, I have trouble using more than just LXDE.  I.e., as mix'n and matching DEs on Ubuntu doesn't seem to work like Fedora (all DEs supported in the main repos).
>
>> If your windowing session crashes immediately upon login on one OS but not the other, this could be the problem. Figuring out which file(s) and possibly settings in a file can be "fun".
>
> Which is why I run different DEs, typically one supported natively by the distro best.
>
> - bjs
>
> P.S. Regarding mounts (and exports) ...
>
> The LV 'elocal' gets mounted to /exports/local, which is auto-mounted to /home/local, under all Linux instances on that system.  All local users created go into /home/local (I change the defaults in /etc/security/useradd, etc...).
>
> Any exported filesystems (e.g., NFS) that may be mounted on other servers are in /exports/_servername_/_purpose_, and get mounted under /home/_domainname_/_purpose_ on other systems.  That way there is a consistent nomenclature, and one that maps to the IPA domain and its domain automounter map.
>
> The /home directory itself is on root (/).  There is only one (1) user that has a home directory in that system, and it's 'sysadmin' UID/GID=1000.  That's in case any other file systems, whether local or network, cannot be mounted.  I can still get in with a non-root user.  It's a local user and home directory not shared with any other instance or system.



-- 
Bryan J Smith  -  http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith
E-mail:  b.j.smith at ieee.org  or  me at bjsmith.me