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Thread: Do separate /home partitions provide any advantage anymore?

  1. #21
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    Re: Do separate /home partitions provide any advantage anymore?

    Quote Originally Posted by wolfen69 View Post
    But I don't make mistakes, so.....
    Quote Originally Posted by forrestcupp View Post
    I've only made one mistake. That was when I thought I was wrong about something, but I wasn't.

    I, on the other hand, rm'ed my home folder a couple of weeks ago.

    8^)

  2. #22
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    Re: Do separate /home partitions provide any advantage anymore?

    Try rsync -a * instead of rsync -a / and then reinstall without checking to make sure everything was copied..

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  3. #23
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    Re: Do separate /home partitions provide any advantage anymore?

    When 11.10 comes out I plan on wiping 10.10 and only backing up the media files in my /home folder then when I install 11.10 I'll make a separate partition for my /home this time around. It's also a dual boot system with Windows 7. Would it be a good idea to make it a NTFS?

  4. #24
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    Re: Do separate /home partitions provide any advantage anymore?

    If the 11.10 installer can scoot itself around an existing /home, then the simplest thing would be to delete all hidden (config) files in ~, then trust Ubiquity to do the rest. Alternately, you can make the old / into a new /home (move your personal folder to the root and nuke the rest) and still not have to copy anything off and back again.

    NTFS doesn't store permissions the same way as ext4, does it? Particularly execute permissions?

  5. #25
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    Re: Do separate /home partitions provide any advantage anymore?

    Quote Originally Posted by FuturePilot View Post
    I've been using a separate home partition for some time now. The big advantage was that you could reinstall Ubuntu without losing all of your personal data. However, Ubiquity now supports preserving your /home. So I'm thinking about just going back to a single partition. Are there any advantages to having a separate /home partition now?
    I'm still on 10.10 out of laziness, and I'd backed up and then restored /home in conjunction with a fresh install for the couple releases prior to that. I have a separate /home partition.

    Does this mean when 12.04 comes out and I pop the 12.04 USB in that the backing up of /home will truly be only cursory 'just in case'?

    Does ubiquity recognize separate /home partitions and simply give you a 'keep existing /home' option and then works the rest out itself?
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  6. #26
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    Re: Do separate /home partitions provide any advantage anymore?

    Quote Originally Posted by Legendary_Bibo View Post
    It's also a dual boot system with Windows 7. Would it be a good idea to make it a NTFS?
    For dual booting with Win7, I always leave most of the space on my Windows partition, and just use the Windows Documents, Music folders, etc., to store all of my media. Then I just set up Nautilus or whatever file browser I use in Linux to have shortcuts in the left panel to my Windows media folders. I hardly use my /home directory at all, other than for all of those config files, and some 3rd party software that installs there.

    It's a lot easier and less messy to get Linux to read NTFS than it is to get Windows to read Ext file systems.
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  7. #27
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    Re: Do separate /home partitions provide any advantage anymore?

    Quote Originally Posted by Legendary_Bibo View Post
    When 11.10 comes out I plan on wiping 10.10 and only backing up the media files in my /home folder then when I install 11.10 I'll make a separate partition for my /home this time around. It's also a dual boot system with Windows 7. Would it be a good idea to make it a NTFS?
    No need for such actions. If you're dual booting with Windows, don't even make a separate /home, just back your desired config files. Make a shared NTFS partition for Linux and Windows, then install oneiric in a single partition, bring back your config files, edit fstab to mount the shared partition as /media or something.

    Delete all the Music, Video, Downloads and other folders in $HOME, recreate those folders on the media partition and symlink them to $HOME. It sounds like a lot of work, but the it's only editing fstab, symlinking is done easiest by slitting the pane in Nautilus, dragging the from the media partition with the middle button, and selecting "link here".

    That way your data will always be safe from both Linux and Windows going crazy. You can even resize the Windows system partition to some acceptable level (I have my mothers C:\ at 30 GB with no problems at all, the Libraries thing does everything else easy for her, even though Explorer is still a dreadful file manager, almost as bad as Nautilus).

    I'd also suggest you boot the Windows rescue CD, fix the MBR, make sure you can boot Windows, then during the new install put GRUB in /, and have BOOTMGR chain-loading to the GRUB in /. I'm saying this because I just came back from a rescue operation for a poorly made dual boot, where the sysadmin did some monkeying around with the partitions, so the original GRUB didn't want to boot anything, and the reinstalled one doesn't boot XP (and I couldn't do anything, since I didn't have a Windows CD around).
    Last edited by CharlesA; October 6th, 2011 at 03:12 PM. Reason: wording..

  8. #28
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    Re: Do separate /home partitions provide any advantage anymore?

    Quote Originally Posted by el_koraco View Post
    No need for such actions. If you're dual booting with Windows, don't even make a separate /home, just back your desired config files. Make a shared NTFS partition for Linux and Windows, then install oneiric in a single partition, bring back your config files, edit fstab to mount the shared partition as /media or something.

    Delete all the Music, Video, Downloads and other folders in $HOME, recreate those folders on the media partition and symlink them to $HOME. It sounds like a lot of work, but the it's only editing fstab, symlinking is done easiest by slitting the pane in Nautilus, dragging the from the media partition with the middle button, and selecting "link here".

    That way your data will always be safe from both Linux and Windows going crazy. You can even resize the Windows system partition to some acceptable level (I have my mothers C:\ at 30 GB with no problems at all, the Libraries thing does everything else easy for her, even though Explorer is still a dreadful file manager, almost as bad as Nautilus).

    I'd also suggest you boot the Windows rescue CD, fix the MBR, make sure you can boot Windows, then during the new install put GRUB in /, and have BOOTMGR chain-loading to the GRUB in /. I'm saying this because I just came back from a rescue operation for a poorly made dual boot, where the sysadmin did some monkeying around with the partitions, so the original GRUB didn't want to boot anything, and the reinstalled one doesn't boot XP (and I couldn't do anything, since I didn't have a Windows CD around).
    So 3 partitions, one for Windows install, one for Ubuntu install, and the third to store everything as an NTFS partition so that Windows and Ubuntu can access the same files? This would be a better setup than what I have now. I have a dual boot system where windows is 80gb but for Music I have to make a copy from the ubuntu partition to the Windows partition which is just a waste of space. I'm always struggling to make room on my Windows partition (I use it for games)

  9. #29
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    Re: Do separate /home partitions provide any advantage anymore?

    Quote Originally Posted by Legendary_Bibo View Post
    So 3 partitions, one for Windows install, one for Ubuntu install, and the third to store everything as an NTFS partition so that Windows and Ubuntu can access the same files?
    Yup, two primary ones for Windows and shared, one extended for / and swap. Dunno if you can install games to the second partition in Windows, I haven't played a game since Neverwinter Nights, but if you can, you don't need to keep the Windows partition big. The symlinking does the trick for Ubuntu's files, and the Explorer Libraries for Windows ones.

    There's no noticable lag when accessing an NTFS partition for data in Linux, but you don't get file permisions and stuff (which is not important for data anyway). I'd say, the whole Ubuntu partition doesn't need to be bigger than 30 GB (and that's just to compensate for stuff you might want to install in $HOME, where permissions matter).

    My / partition is 10 GB, about 50 percent full, and i don't think the config files in /home take up more than a GB.

  10. #30
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    Re: Do separate /home partitions provide any advantage anymore?

    Quote Originally Posted by el_koraco View Post
    My / partition is 10 GB, about 50 percent full, and i don't think the config files in /home take up more than a GB.
    It's something like that, but it can be more or less, depending on what programs you're using. Mozilla apps and LibreOffice store extensions in /home, so if you plan on using a lot of them, it can take more space. Saves for some games can also take up a lot of space (I'm thinking especially of Battle for Wesnoth at the moment, but I'm sure others do as well).

    If you really want to keep the Ubuntu partition to a minimum, you can make a folder with your dot files and folders inside of the data partition, and make a symbolic link to it /home/ (not ~), and then fill that will links to your data folders.

    It's kinda nuts, but it's exactly what I do with my Ubuntu and Debian partitions, and it keeps them both at 3.4 of 5.4 GB partitions (without to many programs). My main Arch system only takes up 4.5 of 9.2GB, and that's with LibreOffice, Gimp, Inkscape, ffmpeg and several other heavy programs (course, I don't have some large things like a DE that you normally have, but still, a large DE is only like 600MB... except KDE...). Anyway, if your careful about system maintenance, remove unused programs, clear you package cache, etc., you can run a very slim system. You could theoretically even put some of your system folders in the data partition and link them (like /usr), to make your / partition positively tiny. You should probably only do that with /usr, actually... doing it with /etc /var /bin /lib... that could potentially cause huge problems.

    /usr is where all the big stuff is anyway. I think I'm going to try that now with one of my "playground partitions." I'll report back if anything gets jacked.

    [edit]
    On second thought, don't move /usr into your home folder and link it to /. I just broke Debian. Should be fixable, and there should even theoretically be possible to do what I did, but there might be a permissions problem. Anyway mess with it at your own risk. I have to go fix Debian.
    Last edited by ninjaaron; October 6th, 2011 at 10:42 PM.

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