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View Full Version : Install Ubuntu on one partition and /home on other partition?



Malmberg
April 20th, 2013, 09:56 AM
Gents, The Newbie has a new problem :-)
On my harddrive I have made a 30GB partition and a 470GB partition.
I THINK I have installed the OS on the small partition and /home on the large partition!
How do I check this?

Thanks in advance
Malmberg

Cheesemill
April 20th, 2013, 10:04 AM
What's the output of...

df -h

Malmberg
April 20th, 2013, 10:17 AM
What's the output of...

df -h


sbm@NX9420:~$ df -h
Filsystem Størr Brugt Tilb Brug% Monteret på
/dev/sda1 29G 3,1G 25G 12% /
udev 494M 4,0K 494M 1% /dev
tmpfs 201M 1,1M 200M 1% /run
none 5,0M 0 5,0M 0% /run/lock
none 502M 80K 502M 1% /run/shm
/dev/sda3 429G 51M 407G 1% /home

Cheesemill
April 20th, 2013, 11:19 AM
Yep, you have / on a 29GB partition and /home on a 429GB partition.

Malmberg
April 20th, 2013, 11:24 AM
Hi Cheesemill,
Thanks!
Im not sure what to do when (not IF, but when) I need to reinstall the OS?
How do I keep my /home during reinstall?
Or- shall I start a new thread with this question?
Cheers

oldfred
April 20th, 2013, 05:16 PM
You have to use Something Else or manual install. You choose sda1, select format as ext4, and mount as / (root). That partition will be totally reformatted & new install will be there. And you select sda3, mount as /home but DO NOT format it. Then it will not change anything other than add updates.

Still best to have good backups. If you install a lot of apps, you may want to make a list with dpkg to make it easy to reinstall.
I also have made a few manual system changes to files in /etc. Those would get overwritten, so I make copies into my /home so my backup saves them, but do not auto copy back as a new install may or may not need them or may need different. But since I may want them it is worth saving.

Oldfred's list of stuff to backup May 2011:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1748541


from lovinglinux - use dpkg to list installed apps
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=7157175&postcount=5
http://kevin.vanzonneveld.net/techblog/article/restore_packages_using_dselectupgrade/

Malmberg
April 21st, 2013, 10:38 AM
Hi Oldfred,
Thanks - Ill print this, so I know what to do when I mess my OS up!

Cheers