Managing multiple users on home PC

[RyanP]

This is a rather lengthy question and maybe outside the scope of this forum, but maybe someone can help. In the life of Linux I guess I am a newbie (started with SuSE 10/cut all ties to windows), while I have been using SuSE for some time now as a home user I want to make a fresh start with SuSE 10.3.
One of my goals for this new install is to create and manage two accounts (besides root), one for myself and one for the wife.
Here comes the question.....
What is the most efficient way to create the two accounts?
I would like to be able to set-up one account's look/feel, applications, and permissions and then maybe us it as a template or a profile I guess.

Thanks for any help

[gogalthorp]

Do you want the two accounts to be identical setups??

Unless you install an app as a user ie not as root ie in your home it will be available to all users and show in all users menus.

The settings for the GUI are in the hidden directories .kde or .gnome and .gnome2 in your home directory

You can copy those to the other user and change the ownership of the copied files/directories to the new user.

as root in the new user home that you just copied your .kde or .gnome

chown -R newusernamehere ./.kde

-R means recursively traverse sub-directories

Now the new user GUI will be a clone of the old user

Note when you create a new user the default GUI settings will be set when first run. I suggest it would be better to set your desktop to your liking and then help the wife set hers to her liking. This would take more time but would score spouse points

Also since you most likely want to share some files it would be a good idea to setup a directory you can both use. Best place would be off home. Maybe call it /home/share give it read/write permission for all in the user group.

Note files placed in the share would need there permissions changed also in most cases to allow any in the user group read/write. I believe most files will have read access for others in the group so you only would need to change write access if you wished to allow the other user(s) write permission.

[RyanP]

gogalthorp

I actually do want to start with two identical setups. One reason is that I had an almost infinite list of Apps installed with SuSE. I want to configure KBFX to show only the Apps I use and I don't want to do it again for my wife. I do plan to score some “spouse points” though by helping my wife set-up her theme (wallpaper, color scheme, and so on).

I think you gave me just what I was looking for and I plan to follow your advice sometime next month after I feel confident that I have backed up all my data (Picasa will be tedious) . Also I appreciate the tip on the share space. I think I can set-up a script to modify the write permissions at the end of the day.
Thanks again.

[gogalthorp]

There is another thing you can do. If you did a default install you will have a separate partition for home. If so when installing and you get to the partitioning plan manually set the current home not to be formated. be sure to define the mount point as /home. Set the current root to format and mount as /. You can do that with any other partitions you might want to save.

[softh]

Hi Ryan,
Did you intend to keep your existing Suse install? Though Suse is very good about installing clean, there are always possibilitys of a gotcha in any install. I have over the years learned to keep my existing install and install the new OS in on its own partition setup. For instance I had an ACPI problem with the 10.3 install that required that I manually edit the xorg config file to get X running. It was really nice to be able to do so from 10.2 in KEdit rather that ed, joe or vim from 10.3's console. I was able to compare the files from 10.2 and 10.3 and simply cut/paste the diffs as needed.

There are scores of ways to effect this type of setup, I would be pleased to tell you how I do so in detail if you ask. I can't really expound to much on this now because I do not know what kind of hard drive space, partitioning or backup strategy you use at this time. I have my primary work station setup for several users in the family and even a guest user identity. I play around with several flavors of Linux though as you can see below Suse is my main squeeze. At this time 10.2 is the OS most everyone uses. Suse 10.3 is being setup as I have time. Sabayon is just to play with, and Suse 10.0 is due to be replaced by something else sometime soon.

But basically my current disk setup looks like this:
hda 400 gb disk - 375gb usable
hda1 extended partition - 375gb
hda5 grub partition 1 512mb /boot - Suse 10.0
hda6 grub partition 2 512mb /boot - Sabayon 3.3
hda7 grub partition 3 512mb /boot - Suse 10.2
hda8 grub partition 4 512mb /boot - Suse 10.3
hda9 root partition 1 40gb /. - Suse 10.0
hda10 swap 2gb
hda11 root partition 2 40gb /. Sabayon 3.3
hda12 root partition 3 40gb /. - Suse 10.2
hda13 swap 2gb
hda14 root partition 4 40gb /. - Suse 10.3
hda15 root partition 4 200+gb /virtual - VMWare and ISO's

hdb 300 gb disk - 280gb usable
hdb1 extended partition - 280gb
hdb5 grub partition 1 140gb /kommon - shared directorys
hdb6 grub partition 2 140gb /personal - personal directorys

I install all OS files on the 30gb root partitions, including /home. I use the second 300gb disk I use for personal and shared files. I use external USB drives for work related projects backups, archives and etc. A note of importance here, the new IDE system drivers shipped with Suse 10.3 do not support more that 15 partitions per disk at this time.

Matthew