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I have a pendrive made using mkusb.

It has the standard Persistent setup with ISO9660 OS partition, boot, casper-rw and usbdata partitions.

I would like to add a Full install Ubuntu partition and a /home partition.

I may also add some iso's to boot later.

How can I share the home partition between the various OS?

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Sharing home Partition on a Multiple Boot USB

/home and home-rw may share a partition on a bootable USB drive, offering a link between Full and Persistent installs to the same USB. This also allows multiple installs and bootable ISOs to each have a home folder greater than 4GB each.

  • Using mkusb, install Ubuntu to a 4GB pendrive as a Live install, (no persistence, important). Use default settings

  • Using mkusb, install Ubuntu to a 32GB pendrive as a Persistent install, Use default settings but allow 21GB for persistence.

  • Shrink partition 5 to 7GB and add 2 more ext4 partitions.

  • Remove casper-rw label from Partition 5.

  • Make a copy of 32GB Partition 3 /boot/grub/grub.cfg.

  • Plug in both pendrives and boot into the 4GB drive.

  • Select Install.

  • At "Something else" select the 32GB drive for boot loader.

  • Select partition 7, change to ext4, Format and /.

  • Select partition 6, change to ext4, Format and /home.

  • Select "Install now" and complete installation.

  • Open the 32GB pendrive in GParted.

  • Change the label of Partition 5 back to casper-rw.

  • Change the label of Partition 6 to home-rw.

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  • Open the copied grub.cfg and copy any menuentries you want to use.

  • Paste the selected menuentries into Partition 7 /etc/grub.d/40_custom/

  • Run sudo update-grub from the Full install.

  • You may add as many Users as you have OS.

  • The same username can share a home folder between installs as long as the flavor of Ubuntu is the same, Ubuntu version may vary.

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  • +1. Good instructions :-) I have a question: Are you able to boot this system in both UEFI and BIOS mode? I did it this way: Install the installed system in BIOS mode and write the bootloader to the root partition of the installed system (not to the head of the drive). This will not overwrite the boot system of mkusb. In such a system there is one more step: copy grub.cfg from the installed system (after all your steps) to the location in partition #3. But if you are happy with either boot mode (only UEFI or only BIOS), your instructions will work and are easier to maintain.
    – sudodus
    Feb 15, 2019 at 12:11
  • Yesterday I got turned around and installed to root of the drive. I had to copy menuentries from a saved original mkusb grub.cfg to /etc/grub.d/40_custom and update-grub. Drive is using grub.cfg from sdc7. I did not format sdc3 in Something else, grub.cfg from sdc3 is not being used. Everything seems to be working fine BIOS and UEFI. Will keep experimenting.
    – C.S.Cameron
    Feb 16, 2019 at 3:50

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