# Sharing /home between i386 & amd64 dual-boot



## sim (Dec 10, 2009)

Hi

Quick question... I'm dual-booting FreeBSD 8 i386 and amd64, with KDE4.3 on both.  i386 for day to day use, but with the idea of transitioning to amd64 if it works out.

So.. Is it safe to use the same home partition on both installs, so that I don't have to maintain two sets of configurations, home files etc every time I switch?

Thanks

sim


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## SirDice (Dec 10, 2009)

The filesystem is still the same, it doesn't matter if you use amd64 or i386. So yes, you can do that.


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## graudeejs (Dec 10, 2009)

I don't think it would work if you use ZFS ... because zfs is checking for hostid


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## sim (Dec 10, 2009)

Yes the filesystems are both old-skool UFS2   The concern was more whether apps/kde on each installation would get confused, but my (naive) guess is that it should be OK.

sim


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## SirDice (Dec 10, 2009)

sim said:
			
		

> Yes the filesystems are both old-skool UFS2   The concern was more whether apps/kde on each installation would get confused, but my (naive) guess is that it should be OK.


I think these should be ok. If anything they'll only store user settings in $HOME. As long as you keep the same version of KDE on both systems this should work.


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## phoenix (Dec 10, 2009)

killasmurf86 said:
			
		

> I don't think it would work if you use ZFS ... because zfs is checking for some kind of system ID (i forgot the term)



ZFS would work fine in this situation.  You would just have to run [cmd=]zpool export <poolname>[/cmd] as part of the shutdown process, to allow it to be properly imported on bootup.


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## phoenix (Dec 10, 2009)

So long as there are no compiled binaries stored under /home, you'll be fine.

You'll want to keep the app versions as close together on the two systems as possible, to prevent corruption in config files.


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## graudeejs (Dec 10, 2009)

phoenix said:
			
		

> ZFS would work fine in this situation.  You would just have to run [cmd=]zpool export <poolname>[/cmd] as part of the shutdown process, to allow it to be properly imported on bootup.



That will work only if you boot from UFS.... you can't boot from exported zfs as far as i know


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## sim (Dec 10, 2009)

Thanks for your input chaps.  I bit the bullet and updated my amd64 fstab to mount the i386 /home partition on /home.  Seems to work OK so far.. 

sim


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