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

[gold_finger]

Also if I run a virtual machine (e.g. using Oracle Virtualbox to run Windows XP), will this automatically be installed on /mnt/DATA, or will it appear in zorin/home or ll/home?

I'm going to answer this first.

Virtual Box creates two things in your home folder -- configuration related files and a place where it stores your VMs (Virtual Machines).

• Config file = /home/username/.config/VirtualBox
  
• VM files = /home/username/VirtualBox VMs  (or something to that effect)
  

If you want the VMs to be saved on your DATA partition (good idea), you will need to create a folder on the DATA partition for them first ("VBox_VMs" for example).  Then copy everything in /home/username/Virtualbox VMs over to /mnt/DATA/VBox_VMs.  ("VBox_VMs" is just my example -- you can be name it whatever you want.  Would be best to not have spaces in the name.)  Once you've copied that over, open VirtualBox and change the default location that it looks to for those VMs.

*  From main VBox window, click File -> Preferences
*  Under General -> Default Machine Folder fill-in the location where you want those VMs to be stored.  In your case, that will be something like /mnt/DATA/VBox_VMs.  (Mine reads differently because I use the bind method instead of symlinks.)


*  Click OK when done.
*  Shutdown VBox and restart it.

I can't remember if the machines you have automatically show as available right away or if you need to "add" them back to main interface window.  If you don't see them, click Machine -> Add.  That will open the new folder location that you set for it to look in and list your VMs.  Highlight the one you want and hit Open.

Once you confirm that everything works, go ahead and delete that original folder, /home/username/VirtualBox VMs.

If you want to create a symlink to that new folder location in /home/username follow same format as you did to create the other symlinks:

Code:

ln -s /mnt/DATA/VBox_VMs /home/username

If you want the VMs to be save in your /home partition, then you'll need to take that into account when choosing a size for the /home partitions.  It will need to be much bigger in order to accomodate the size of the virtual drives you'll be making.  However, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to put them in /home.  If you have them on the DATA partition, you can keep and re-use them when installing new OSs and you can also use the same VMs in both LL and Zorin rather than duplicating them in each OS's /home.

However I have two internal hard drives on my laptop and would like to organize partitions in such a way as to increase efficiency in the way the two operating systems work.  The core of each OS will go on sda, while the /mnt/DATA and separate home partitions (i.e. zorin6/home and ll2/home) will go on sdb.

My question is this -  ...when I create the links from zorin & LL to /mnt/DATA, I assume should use the UUIDs of the separate home partitions on sdb, rather than the UUIDs of the core of the operating systems on sda?

I'm assuming you are asking about how entries should look in /etc/fstab file.  Answer is "No".  The UUIDs of the home partitions are not involved in the symlinking process.

With regard to anything on the DATA partition that you are symlinking to, the line for mounting the DATA partition does not change no matter where you are symlinking to.  You still have just one line with the UUID of the DATA partition for auto-mounting it on boot (not counting a comment line you may want to describe the mounting line).  Basically, when you're done each OS will have lines for mounting:

• their root partition
  
• their home partition
  
• the swap partition
  
• the DATA partition
  

If you are planning to re-install both OSs so they each have a separate /home partition, the install process will automatically create fstab lines for the partitions you designate when installing.  When selecting partitions and setting mount points during the install process, if you also select the DATA partition and assign it the mount point "/mnt/DATA", that too will be automatically entered into the fstab file.  Just remember not to check the box to format that DATA partition if you've already got things on it.  (If you prefer, you can just set up the DATA partition after the installation and manually add the entry needed in fstab.)

If the DATA partition is brand new (not the same one you have already started using), you will need take ownership of the mount point after booting into each distro.

Code:

sudo chown -R your-username:your-username /mnt/DATA

If you are using same DATA partition that you've already setup, you shouldn't need to do that unless you have changed your username to a different one than what you have now.  That's because in Linux the permissions are set on the filesystem itself and stay with it until you change it again.  You could move that drive to a different computer and as long both computers have you setup with the same username and UID#, you will be able to access and use the files on that DATA partition immediately without needing to use a root password.

If you are planning to add a new /home partition after-the-fact to each installation -- that is a different situation and can be a bit complicated.  I've not done that myself, so here are a couple of links that get into those details:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Partit...ome/Moving
http://www.howtogeek.com/116742/

(Not sure if old symlinks will still work or not.  You might need to redo them.)