Alternative location for settings for multiple linuxes?

[redgsturbo]

Heres the scenerio.. i have /dev/mapper/gentoo, dev/mapper,ubuntu, and /dev/mapper/home. home is mounted using pam_mount at login. It contains my actual home directory encrypted. I'd like to utilize this partition for either OS so I am free to flipflop between gentoo and ubuntu and yet still carry all my settings with me. What is the best way to accomplish this? I don't want either OS clobbering settings for the other... I was thinking that if there is someway to make gentoo look for gentoo settings in /home/myhome/.gentoo/ and likewise for ubuntu this might work and then I could just symlink my documents, pics, etc directories into a convinient place... but I don't know if this is possible or if a cleaner solution exists. Anyone? Thanks!

[NeddySeagoon]

redgsturbo,

The cleanest way to do this is to make different users for the different distros and another dir in /home for your documents.
You will need to create the users with identical names in the same order in every distro, so they get the same UserID.
Its UserIDs that are used everywhere, not usernames.

Put all your users in a common group, say users, on each distro.

As root, in any distro, make a /home/docs folder anc chown it to users:users

Now, each disto will save it settings in the /home/<username> you use to login as and you can point the applications to save things in the /home/docs folder.

The only complication is that you must remember to log in as the right user.
You can arrange to be refused a login if you attempt to use the wrong username by mangling you shell in /etc/passwd for users that are not permitted to log in in the distro. set it to /bin/nologin instead of /bin/bash
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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