Shared home directories between distros

[David Bandel]

On 2/5/06, Collins Richey <crichey at gmail.com> wrote:
> Here's a little conundrum to take our minds off red and blue states for a while.
>
> I like to tinker with multiple distros, but sharing a home directory
> can create problems with widely varying levels of kde, gnome etc. and
> with varying conceps of a suitable uid (some start with 500, some
> start with 1000, etc.).
>
> What I would like to wind up with is an arrangement similar to classes
> in an OO structure such that all hidden files go in a unique place and
> other files go in a shared place in a home directory and have this
> automatically resolved, ie

all that comes to mind is CVS for shared files.  That or rsync what
you want between home directories.

>
>    *-------------*
>    | .files         | --->
>    | (distro 1)  |
>    *-------------*                *-------------------------*
>                                        |   shared common  |
>            . . .       --->          |       directory          |
>                                        |     for my userid      |
>    *-------------*                *-------------------------*
>    | .files         | --->
>    | (distro n)  |
>    *-------------*
>
> There may be a few .files like .mozilla that I would choose to copy
> between distros,but most of them I would want to keep segregated to
> avoid niggling problems such as the desktop software falling over
> because it's encountered out-of-version stuff in its private
> playground.
>
> I could probably make this work with some sort of symlinks, but then
> there's the problem of differing uids. If each distro is left to its
> own devices, the shared common directory might not be easily sharable
> without tionkering with permissions.  I've never been able to find
> just where a distro keeps its concept of "next available uid" so that
> I could change all distros to have a common behavior for assigning
> uids..

useradd -D
man useradd

> Any suggestions?

Ciao,

David A. Bandel
--
Focus on the dream, not the competition.
            - Nemesis Air Racing Team motto