Re: [--tech--]Re: installing multuple distributions

[Mateusz Marzantowicz <mateuszm@server.pl>]

On Mon, 2009-02-09 at 09:46 +0100, Pol wrote:
> <posted & mailed>
> 
> Yuri Csapo wrote:
> 
> > 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!
> 
> yes, i realise /etc/passwd and /etc/group might contain
> distribution-specific details
> thank you

... as well as other files in /etc directory. I think it'd be good idea
to have /etc unshared between your Linux distros.

Things that could possibly be problematic when sharing /etc are:
- passwd and group (as mentioned)
- boot scripts in rcN.d and init.d
- PAM configuration (if any is present, but most of Linux distros uses
it)
- other common system config (you'll need to merge all common files
which may be different in various Linux distros)


--
Mateusz Marzantowicz