Dual-booting with other Linuxes; shared data partition

Question

I've got two entirely-blank 320GB hard drives on my computer, and I'd like to dual-boot Arch and Debian on it (and potentially others later). How should I set up GRUB (or GRUB2-- the wiki says that it's a better option when dual booting with other distros) for each OS in order to have both of them able to boot, as well as retaining the capability of adding other distros? (Assuming that Arch's GRUB(2), not Debian's, will be installed to the MBR.)
In addition, I'd like to keep my config files and data separate (with a shared data partition on HD 2).
- What is the best way to set this up separately from the /home partition, i.e. mount /data on startup and be able to access it quickly from a filemanager or the commandline? I venture a guess that I'd edit /etc/fstab and add a symlink to /data within /home/USERNAME...
- What is the right size for the /home partition in this setup?
A tentative partition scheme is as follows (note that I have 4GB RAM, since that factors into swap size):
HD 1
  4GB shared swap partition
  256MB ext3 Arch /boot partition
  20GB ext4 Arch / partition
  ? ext4 Arch /home partition *see note above*
  256MB ext3 Debian /boot partition
  20GB ext4 Debian / partition
  ? ext4 Debian /home partition *see note above*
  (free space)
HD 2
  320GB shared ext4 data partition
Last edited by DrKillPatient (2012-06-20 18:38:01)

Answer 1

Most of it is a matter of opinion I think, but since I have a similar setup I'll throw in my two cents.
DrKillPatient wrote:I've got two entirely-blank 320GB hard drives on my computer, and I'd like to dual-boot Arch and Debian on it (and potentially others later). How should I set up GRUB (or GRUB2-- the wiki says that it's a better option when dual booting with other distros) for each OS in order to have both of them able to boot, as well as retaining the capability of adding other distros? (Assuming that Arch's GRUB(2), not Debian's, will be installed to the MBR.)
I use GRUB (legacy). Adding a distro in the grub menu is just a matter of finding the kernel and initram image of the distro and adding an entry. OS's generally either have a fixed location/name for the kernel and image or have a fixed link, so there are no problems on updates. I really don't like GRUB 2 and don't see the point of using it unless you are using something exotic that GRUB doesn't support.
DrKillPatient wrote:I
In addition, I'd like to keep my config files and data separate (with a shared data partition on HD 2).
- What is the best way to set this up separately from the /home partition, i.e. mount /data on startup and be able to access it quickly from a filemanager or the commandline? I venture a guess that I'd edit /etc/fstab and add a symlink to /data within /home/USERNAME...
- What is the right size for the /home partition in this setup?
I just mount the data partition in /mnt/data and make symlinks from my home partition. In my case the data partition is ntfs, since I also use windows. My home partition contains 1.2 GB, of which 600 MB source code. So if you only keep configs in them it probably won't reach 1 GB.
DrKillPatient wrote:
I
A tentative partition scheme is as follows (note that I have 4GB RAM, since that factors into swap size):
HD 1
  4GB shared swap partition
  256MB ext3 Arch /boot partition
  20GB ext4 Arch / partition
  ? ext4 Arch /home partition *see note above*
  256MB ext3 Debian /boot partition
  20GB ext4 Debian / partition
  ? ext4 Debian /home partition *see note above*
  (free space)
HD 2
  320GB shared ext4 data partition
In my opinion a seperate boot partition is only useful for the OS of which the bootloader is installed to the MBR.