Feature changed by: Dominique Leuenberger (dimstar_suse) Feature #314883, revision 5 Title: /root symlinked to /home/root - openSUSE Distribution: Unconfirmed + openSUSE Distribution: Rejected by Dominique Leuenberger (dimstar_suse) + reject reason: Reasons have been outlined - /home being sep. makes + sense, moving root's home there can be fatal if /home has mount + failures. Priority Requester: Neutral Requested by: Kalenz . (kalenz) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: I might be saying something stupid here, in which case just shout me down. But: by default openSUSE installs with a separate /home partition, and for a typical user the most obvious benefits are: - ability to format/reinstall without erasing /home; - ability to share /home with different installs/distros; - (less sexy: keep root partition small, for efficiency.) Based on the first two arguments, I think we would be doing most users a favour by placing /root on the /home folder. Arguments for: (1) It is the home folder of the root user, so surely /home is a sensible place to keep it; (2) /root typically contains credential files, config scripts and so on, which you probably don't want to lose if you format / (and not /home). Arguments against: (3) I can imagine this to be problematic if you encrypt /, but not /home. What do others think? Discussion: #1: Stakanov Schufter (stakanov) (2013-03-03 17:59:49) This is IMO not a good idea because: if you have a problem with the home directory (especially not enought space left) a user that is not technical can use the guy of root to understand what is going on. Of course one should login as root as less as possible and if possible not as GUI. But there are situations where this comes handy. i.e. if you want to find out if the reason of KDE not starting is in KDE or in the home directory (if you put the home of root in home you cannot differentiate this any more. b) you are right also that with the encrypted partition this will be also an issue c) it would make the home of root seem to be "just a home" and the user would not ask herself why root is a very special and different user and will lower the inhibition to login as root in a GUI. d) I do not think that this would be a good idea even with permissions (although i am not sure about the last point). e) the problem of sharing /home with different distros is AFAIK not limited to the location of home but much more the fact of different settings in KDE and different approaches with links and scripts within the distros. Therefore it is not IMO a good idea to share /home with different distros. Just my two cents, so I voted against. Sorry. #2: Neil Rickert (nrickert) (2013-03-04 23:08:58) I agree that this is a bad idea. The root account needs to be accessible, even in the home filesystem is broken. My suggestion: Create a directory "/home/rootbackup" and occasionally backup "/root" there, perhaps as a compressed tar archive. That way you will have a backup on "/home" of what you want to preserve between releases. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/314883