I just checked and my /home directory is about 2GB in size. I have about 1.5GB on my drive (I forgot my work system has 2 drives, one for Linux and one for W2k). If I were to take my second drive (W2K), format it for Linux with a /home partition and move my /home dirctory to it, will I have any problems with programs not running correctly? How will this help when I install the next SuSE that comes along (8.3 in 3 more months?). Thank you all that responded. This has been very educational. Tom On Sun, 2003-04-27 at 22:38, Ben Rosenberg wrote:

* John LeMay (jlemay@njmc.com) [030427 22:35]: -> ->>Can I use the YAST2 Partitioner program for this? If I don't have enough ->>room, how can I change my NTFS partition of the hard drive to Linux? -> ->Sorry, don't know the answer to these. I expect the answer to the first ->Q is no, and for the other Q someone else will have to pipe up.

Sure. You should be able to delete the partition with the partition tool in YaST2 and create a Linux native partition.

-- Ben Rosenberg ---===---===---===--- mailto:ben@whack.org Tell me what you believe.. I'll tell you what you should see.

-- Tom Nielsen Neuro Logic Systems 805.389.5435 x18 www.neuro-logic.com

On 28 Apr 2003 08:46:09 -0700 Tom Nielsen wrote:

I just checked and my /home directory is about 2GB in size. I have about 1.5GB on my drive (I forgot my work system has 2 drives, one for Linux and one for W2k). If I were to take my second drive (W2K), format it for Linux with a /home partition and move my /home dirctory to it, will I have any problems with programs not running correctly?

How will this help when I install the next SuSE that comes along (8.3 in 3 more months?). There are many reasons for setting up multiple partitions. Since /home and /usr/local normally are independent of your Linux installation, it is sometimes better to make these separate. Then, when you install a new version of Linux, you don't need to bother with these 2 file systems. There are some issues, such as having older programs relying on deprecated libraries. But, most will continue to function.

If you religiously back up your system, then your partitioning could make a big difference. I back up only /home. I maintain a source directory in /home so that anything I download independently of SuSE is there. But, for a home system, generally, a root, /home and /usr/local directories should suffice. Making too many file system then becomes a management headache, but LVM eases the problem. -- Jerry Feldman Boston Linux and Unix user group http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9 PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9

On Monday 28 April 2003 18:36, Tom Nielsen wrote:

On Mon, 2003-04-28 at 09:28, Jerry Feldman wrote:

...

If you religiously back up your system, then your partitioning could make a big difference. I back up only /home. I maintain a source directory in /home so that anything I download independently of SuSE is there. But, for a home system, generally, a root, /home and /usr/local directories should suffice. Making too many file system then becomes a management headache, but LVM eases the problem.

Do you think my first comment about moving my /home directory to a /home partition on another drive is safe and I won't have any program launching problems? I don't mind experimenting on my home system, but I can't risk going down at work.

I would. But again, it is a matter of choice. If you have two drives, one with / and one with /home, I doubt that both would go bad at the same time. If you lose your / drive then a re-install should get you back. If you lose your /home drive (and you have a backup) you restore that. I backup my entire system, but I know quite a few folks that only backup /home.

I backup my work system, but rarely my home.

If you don't mind losing the stuff at home, that's fine. Mike -- Powered by SuSE 8.1 Kernel 2.4.19 KDE 3.1.1 Kmail 1.5.1 For SuSE Mondo/Mindi backup support go to http://www.mikenjane.net/~mike 6:47pm up 8 days, 21:50, 5 users, load average: 1.38, 1.71, 1.80

On Mon, 2003-04-28 at 09:59, Jerry Feldman wrote:

On 28 Apr 2003 09:36:29 -0700 Tom Nielsen wrote:

...

Do you think my first comment about moving my /home directory to a /home partition on another drive is safe and I won't have any program launching problems? I don't mind experimenting on my home system, but I can't risk going down at work. It is safe, but I don't see much of an advantage. I've seen heavily used drives run for years and lightly used drives fail. What I do is to backup my /home directory onto a separate drive. I also have a copy of the root directory from when I installed SuSE 8.1. So, if my boot drive fails, I can easily boot my second drive.

From what I understand, if I put my home directory on it's own partition and I have a bad upgrade (like I did this weekend) and need to format my drive and reinstall, I won't lose the files in my home directory because

It's really not a matter of backing up that I'm concerned with, but more of future upgrades and having problems with things going wrong and losing my /home files. they will be on their own partition. Correct? I'm sorry if I'm going around in circles here, I hate asking stuff over email because questions keep poping up in my head. Thanks -- Tom Nielsen Neuro Logic Systems 805.389.5435 x18 www.neuro-logic.com