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Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: a question of installing linux operating system on external hard drive
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From: floyd@apaflo.com (Floyd L. Davidson)
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Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2014 10:08:24 -0800
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newbie2 <xsli2@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I am very interested in installing Linux Ubuntu on an
>external hard drive. Ideally, I hope that when I plug
>this HD to my desktop which has Windows 7 operating
>system, then I can use Ubuntu to do my programming work
>and all my code, database mysql, Eclipse, Java etc all
>are installed at the external hard drive. Then I can
>unplug it from this desktop and plug into a laptop, I
>can continue my work left at Desktop. Is this possible?
>
>Desktop hardware and the laptop hardware are different,
>e.g. video card, wifi card etc. So when the external HD
>is with the desktop and I have installed Linux video
>card drivers(to the external HD) for the desktop
>hardware. When with the laptop, the previously installed
>drivers may not work with laptop video card or other
>hard ware. How to solve this problem?

I'm not particularly familiar with Ubunto, so I cannot
list in detail all the specifics necessary to accomplish
this.  But it is actually fairly easy.

You simply need to have two separate root filesystems on
your external hard disk.  I've done that using Slackware
and Lilo.  I think Ubuntu uses Grub, but it certainly
will be able to do the same thing.

If you separate the various filesystem onto different
partitions, you can have the same /boot, /usr, /var, and
/home partitions for the laptop and the desktop system.
I'd use maybe a 1GB /root for the laptop and another for
the desktop.  Then a /usr partition large enough to hold
whatever that distribution has that you want to install.

I'm not sure if there would be variations in /var
between two different systems like that.  There might
be!  So just to avoid that as a problem you might have a
different partition to mount as /var for each system
too.

The /boot and /home partitions can be the same.

-- 
Floyd L. Davidson                         http://www.apaflo.com/
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)                      floyd@apaflo.com