Dual Booting LL 2.0 with other Ubuntu (14.04) based distros

[m654321]

Many thanks gold_finger for this very helpful information.

You mentioned you used the 'binding method' for file sharing on a separate DATA partition. Is 'binding' more advantageous to 'symlinking'?  Though the latter appears to work for me, I might try the former now my confidence with Linux is growing... 

Is it easy to undo the symlinks, which I assume is necessary before proceeding with binding?

Regards
Mike

[gold_finger]

I used symlinks myself for a while and they worked fine.  Then, out of curiosity (like you), I tried doing it with bind -- which works well also.  Originally I learned how to use bind from this post:  http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=74321.  (His options #2 and #3 are best for what you want to do.  I happened to pick option #3 in case you're interested.)  In that post, the author states this about advantage of using bind vs. symlinks:

I should note that another way to accomplish all this is simply to create a symbolic link from one location to the next. However, I live in a very networked environment with a combination of Windows, Macs, and Linux machines so I use Samba and the Samba client cannot follow symbolic links without modifying config files which Samba does not recommend.

[m654321]

In the end I simplified things and used more or less the partition system you have, i.e. without separate /home partitions
I have a question about 'binding' - I think I've made a mistake somewhere.

This is the content the upstart job, copied & pasted from the file "bind-home.conf" that I set up...

# Remount partitions with bind
#
description "Bind DATA Partition Subdirectories to My Home Directory"

start on stopped mountall

script
mount --bind /mnt/DATA/Documents /home/m-ll2/Documents
mount --bind /mnt/DATA/Downloads /home/m-ll2/Downloads
mount --bind /mnt/DATA/Linux ISOs /home/m-ll2/Linux ISOs
mount --bind /mnt/DATA/Music /home/m-ll2/Music
mount --bind /mnt/DATA/Photos family /home/m-ll2/Photos family
mount --bind /mnt/DATA/Photos general /home/m-ll2/Photos general
mount --bind /mnt/DATA/Pictures /home/m-ll2/Pictures
mount --bind /mnt/DATA/Public /home/m-ll2/Public
mount --bind /mnt/DATA/Templates /home/m-ll2/Templates
mount --bind /mnt/DATA/TV /home/m-ll2/TV
mount --bind /mnt/DATA/Videos /home/m-ll2/Videos
mount --bind /mnt/DATA/VirtualBox VMs /home/m-ll2/VirtualBox VMs
mount --bind /mnt/DATA/Wallpapers /home/m-ll2/Wallpapers
end script

After I've created the upstart job, should I be doing anything else, e.g. with the terminal? I have just rebooted after saving & closing the above file. I get this message in the terminal whenever I open, save and close the above file....(gedit:2270): IBUS-WARNING **: The owner of /home/m-ll2/.config/ibus/bus is not root! ...maybe there is a problem here.


What should I see when I reboot & open the  '/home'  folder? I don't see the DATA folder , when I open the File Manager.

The 13 folders in the above .conf file have been created in the subfolder 'DATA' within the folder 'mnt', as I saw them under file system  (there is also an additional one called lost+found there).

Many thanks for any help on this.
Regards
Mike

[gold_finger]

What should I see when I reboot & open the  '/home'  folder? I don't see the DATA folder , when I open the File Manager.

The 13 folders in the above .conf file have been created in the subfolder 'DATA' within the folder 'mnt', as I saw them under file system  (there is also an additional one called lost+found there).

You won't see the DATA folder in /home/m-ll2.  You bound the 13 sub-folders of DATA to your home, but you didn't bind the DATA folder itself to home.

The "lost+found" is normal.  It will be automatically generated to allow you to use the Trash function on the partition.


Your "bind-home.conf" file looks good except for a few lines.  The lines I have in red below are most likely not currently working properly:

mount --bind /mnt/DATA/Documents /home/m-ll2/Documents
mount --bind /mnt/DATA/Downloads /home/m-ll2/Downloads
mount --bind /mnt/DATA/Linux ISOs /home/m-ll2/Linux ISOs
mount --bind /mnt/DATA/Music /home/m-ll2/Music
mount --bind /mnt/DATA/Photos family /home/m-ll2/Photos family
mount --bind /mnt/DATA/Photos general /home/m-ll2/Photos general
mount --bind /mnt/DATA/Pictures /home/m-ll2/Pictures
mount --bind /mnt/DATA/Public /home/m-ll2/Public
mount --bind /mnt/DATA/Templates /home/m-ll2/Templates
mount --bind /mnt/DATA/TV /home/m-ll2/TV
mount --bind /mnt/DATA/Videos /home/m-ll2/Videos
mount --bind /mnt/DATA/VirtualBox VMs /home/m-ll2/VirtualBox VMs
mount --bind /mnt/DATA/Wallpapers /home/m-ll2/Wallpapers

Having spaces in the names of your files and/or folders can cause problems when you try to run commands like those in the bind-home.conf file.  For example, when the system tries to run the command mount --bind /mnt/DATA/Linux ISOs /home/m-ll2/Linux ISOs, it will interpret that as you trying to bind /mnt/DATA/Linux to a place called ISOs because of the space that it encounters between the two words.

You have a choice to make.  Either rename those folders in both /mnt/DATA and /home/m-ll2 and change their respective lines in bind-home.conf file; or either "escape" the spaces or quote the folder names with spaces in them in your bind-home.conf file.

Eg. To change the names, simply use a ".", "-", or "_" in place of the spaces.  Change Linux ISOs to Linux_ISOs, for example.

Eg.  If you keep the spaces in the names, you need to remember to either escape the spaces by putting a backslash character before each space in the name, or put the entire name within quote marks when running commands on those files.  Example of escaping same file as above would be Linux\ ISOs.  Or quote the whole thing, "Linux ISOs"

Personally, I find it much easier to not have names with spaces and just use ".", "-", or "_" in place of a space.  That way I don't have to remember to escape or quote things.

NOTE:  If you change the name of "VirtualBox VMs" folder to "VirtualBox_VMs", you will need to follow my instructions here to tell the VirtualBox program its new default machine folder.  Otherwise it will keep looking for things in "VirtualBox VMs", which will no longer exist.

After I've created the upstart job, should I be doing anything else, e.g. with the terminal?

No need to do any more with terminal.  The bind-home.conf file should be saved (as root) to the /etc/init directory.  To check ownership of the file, open a terminal and enter:

Code:

ls -l /etc/init

You'll get a long output of lines.  Scroll back to beginning of the output to find the line for bind-home.conf and make sure it shows that it is owned by root (you'll see "root  root" on the line).  Output should look similar to mine shown here:

I have just rebooted after saving & closing the above file. I get this message in the terminal whenever I open, save and close the above file....(gedit:2270): IBUS-WARNING **: The owner of /home/m-ll2/.config/ibus/bus is not root! ...maybe there is a problem here.

I'm not sure what that error message is.  I'm assuming you installed gedit and are using that instead of leafpad.  Exactly how did you try opening the bind-home.conf file?  Through the file manager, or with a terminal command?

If you used a terminal command, did you use sudo gedit /etc/init/bind-home.conf or gksu gedit /etc/init/bind-home.conf?  When you open GUI programs (like the text editor) as root, you should use gksu instead of sudo.  Maybe that is what caused the error message.

[m654321]

Gold_finger, as you suggested, I filled up the gaps in the folder names in the bind-home.conf file (with hyphen), as well as in the /mnt/DATA and /home/m-ll2 folders. Following reboot, right-clicking on any of the folders in /home/m-ll2 indicates 924GB free so they appear to me to have all bound successfully to /mnt/DATA on the 1TB drive at sdb. I assume that's a correct asumption.  The only other thing on sdb is the swap partition (I abandoned a separate '/home' for each OS and have adopted the system that you more or less use. 

I ran the command 'ls -l /etc/init' in terminal and got the following output for bind-home.conf. I appear to have ownership by 'root' but, the file seems to have been duplicated, the difference being the tilde symbol following the second entry (see below). Should the second entry be deleted. How should I do this??

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  864 Aug 25 05:56 bind-home.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  864 Aug 25 05:49 bind-home.conf~

You ask me a few things. I installed gedit and used this to create the upstart file, though think I might have used leafpad initially, so may still have an erroneous leafpad file floating out there (!) I did use sudo to open and edit the bind-home.conf file (I used terminal, not file manager) but now realize my error (thanks to your advice) and am now using gksu.

Many thanks for your continued support.
Regards
Mike

[gold_finger]

Excellent!  Sounds like you've got it all working right now.  Good job! 

I ran the command 'ls -l /etc/init' in terminal and got the following output for bind-home.conf. I appear to have ownership by 'root' but, the file seems to have been duplicated, the difference being the tilde symbol following the second entry (see below). Should the second entry be deleted. How should I do this??

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  864 Aug 25 05:56 bind-home.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  864 Aug 25 05:49 bind-home.conf~

When you see a file with a tilde at the end, that is just a backup copy.  You can keep or delete it -- it's up to you.  Sometimes the text editor may have it set under its preferences to save a backup copy of files that get edited.  Maybe either gedit or leafpad has that set right now (probably gedit).  You can disable that by just unchecking that preference.

Nothing wrong with installing gedit -- it's just another text editor with a few more features than leafpad.  You can keep and use both of them on the system -- they won't conflict with each other.

EDIT:  I just thought of something that I forgot to ask you before.  Did you have any Virtual Machines created in VirtualBox before you bound the "VirtualBox_VMs" folder to the DATA partition?  If you did, you won't be able to see those anymore.  They will still exist, but you won't be able to access them with the bind in effect.  I can give you instructions on how to find them and transfer them to the DATA partition if you run into that problem.  Let me know if you need to do that.

[m654321]

EDIT:  I just thought of something that I forgot to ask you before.  Did you have any Virtual Machines created in VirtualBox before you bound the "VirtualBox_VMs" folder to the DATA partition?  If you did, you won't be able to see those anymore.  They will still exist, but you won't be able to access them with the bind in effect.  I can give you instructions on how to find them and transfer them to the DATA partition if you run into that problem.  Let me know if you need to do that.

I did have a couple of virtual machines before but I saved them both to  my external drive in their VirtualBox folder, before doing a clean install of the OSes, followed by binding to DATA partition.  By doing that I seem to have saved myself some extra work, judging from your above comment. 

Yes, I'm really pleased I've got this far with linux, being a complete newbie in April (from Win XP) and without any prior programming experience. I am getting into it, though have to admit I don't always understand what I'm doing, though with time everything will become clearer (as it already is), bit-by-bit. Many thanks for all your careful advice gold_finger, though suspect I'll be in touch again sometime...

Regards
Mike

[gold_finger]

Alright then, you're all set.

Go ahead and mark the post as solved.  I think there might be a way to put green check mark on post to signify that it is solved, but don't know exactly where that would be.  If can't find that, go to very first post on the thread, click "Modify" button, then just add <SOLVED> to the Subject title.

[m654321]

Gold_finger, just one small question before I hit the 'solve' button (I found the 'topic solved' button at the bottom of the last post on the LHS of the screenview ) ...

My question...
When I boot  LL 2.0, in either a dual- or multi-boot system (all Linux based), it mounts the partition or partitions (e.g. '40 GB Volume' shown below an icon of the drive) for the other OS or OS-es on the top left-hand side of the desktop screen.  With the system I have, both Zorin OS and Elementary OS, do not do this. Is there something I can do to prevent these automounting on the screen?

Summarizing for the record...
The binding to a separate DATA partition worked really well for the dual boot system with LL2 and Zorin 9. Just for the record, I extended this to include the permissible maximum of four OSes on sda (i.e. I installed LL2.0, Zorin6, Zorin9 & Elementary (Luna) on sda - all Ubuntu based), and used sdb for the shared DATA partition and common Swap partition. When installing the different OSes one-by one, I used the 'something else' option at setup, to partition the drives. All the partitions were set up as 'logical partitions', though this probably doesn't matter as I did not exceed 4 partitions on either sda or sdb. 

Kind regards
Mike

[gold_finger]

When I boot  LL 2.0, in either a dual- or multi-boot system (all Linux based), it mounts the partition or partitions (e.g. '40 GB Volume' shown below an icon of the drive) for the other OS or OS-es on the top left-hand side of the desktop screen.  With the system I have, both Zorin OS and Elementary OS, do not do this. Is there something I can do to prevent these automounting on the screen?

I don't think the other partitions are actually being mounted.  You are probably just seeing icons for them placed on the desktop.  If you double-click the icons, then they will be mounted.  If you open the file manager and look along left-hand side you will see those partitions listed, but you should notice that they are slightly grayed out -- meaning they are not mounted.  If you click them, then they will be mounted.

If you don't want to see their icons on the desktop, just open Menu -> Settings Manager -> Desktop -> Icons (tab) and uncheck "Removable Devices".