Matching user specs for multiple distros

[Anita Lewis]

On Sun, 20 Oct 2002 16:06:30 +0000, Collins wrote:
> I keep all my home stuff in a /home partition.  Since most of my
> partitions are versions of gentoo, the userid's match up and I am able
> to use /home without any complaints.  Now I beginning to experiment
> again with other distros, and I can't mount and use /home
> successfully, because the user numbers don't match.
> 
> For example, I created a LRs-linux 3.0 system (automated version of
> LFS).  I've toyed with /etc/group and deleted and readded the collins
> user several times, but I can't get LRs-linux to use the same user
> number as I was on gentoo, so of course my collins user on LRs can't
> use my /home files.
> 
> I'm sure I will encounter the same problem with Redhat which I am
> downloading now.
> 
> Can anyone help?
> 
> TIA,

The suggestions about using the same UID are the ticket.  Check man useradd
or adduser for how to do that.  I always have to look it up.  

I used to have 4 or 5 distros at any one time - an addiction which was
controlled by the appropriate 12-step program.  One thing you have to watch
out for is overwriting config files.  Some user config files are going to
get overwritten when you start up a program in another distro.  Not a nice
thing.

A good way to solve this is to make another user name for each distro.  You
can make a group that is for all of them and make a data directory to share. 
You can link to that directory in each user directory.  I liked to use the
same mail directory and had to always remember to move my incoming mail out
of the spool and into an appropriate folder in the shared mail directory.

Or you can just take the plunge and see what gets overwritten.  I don't
recall anything that was too awful.  

-- 
Anita
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