[SLE] Having a /data partition
I wanna make a /data partition to house all the stuff that I currently keep in /home, so that I can blow away my /home for the 10.1 installation. I don't want to have any lingering config or profile stuff that might conflict in any way with the new install, so I'd format even /home. So tell me... does this sound like the simplest strategy: 1) Back up everything useful (of course) 2) Plug in the 10.1 DVD and start installing. 3) When I get the option to partition, I just change the mount name of my current /home to /data 4) Allocate the rest of the drives in whatever way seems pleasing, but carve off a small corner of one to become the new /home. 5) Everything except /home-renamed-to-/data gets formatted Reiserfs. 6) Finish up the rest of the installation and enjoy unadulterated 10.1 setup with no held-over baggage. Unless I'm overlooking something, that seems like less trouble than logging in at run-level 3 and re-partitioning before doing the Install. Am I overlooking something? Is any of this a bad idea? Kevin The information contained in this electronic mail transmission may be privileged and confidential, and therefore, protected from disclosure. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to this message and deleting it from your computer without copying or disclosing it. -- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com
On Thu, 2006-06-01 at 15:25 -0400, mlist@safenet-inc.com wrote:
I wanna make a /data partition to house all the stuff that I currently keep in /home, so that I can blow away my /home for the 10.1 installation. I don't want to have any lingering config or profile stuff that might conflict in any way with the new install, so I'd format even /home.
So tell me... does this sound like the simplest strategy:
1) Back up everything useful (of course)
2) Plug in the 10.1 DVD and start installing.
3) When I get the option to partition, I just change the mount name of my current /home to /data
4) Allocate the rest of the drives in whatever way seems pleasing, but carve off a small corner of one to become the new /home.
Why separate /home at all. Trying to guess how much space to allocate to what partition is archace and a left over from 15 years ago. Use a separate partition large enough (plus room for growth) for your data, one for boot and the rest for /. No more guessing as to how much space you need for home. -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998 -- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com
On Thursday 01 June 2006 15:53, Ken Schneider wrote:
Why separate /home at all. Trying to guess how much space to allocate to what partition is archace and a left over from 15 years ago. Use a separate partition large enough (plus room for growth) for your data, one for boot and the rest for /. No more guessing as to how much space you need for home.
We can argue until we're blue in the face but I don't think you really mean this...... If I then do a fresh install (I always do) then I am supposed to lose my bookmarks, documents in the doc file, my Mail directory etc etc. There are arguments both ways... some say that keeping the old home can cause settings problems. I think I'd rather deal with that than lose a bunch of stuff. Never had a problem keeping my /home separate. -- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com
On Thu, 2006-06-01 at 16:08 -0400, Bruce Marshall wrote:
On Thursday 01 June 2006 15:53, Ken Schneider wrote:
Why separate /home at all. Trying to guess how much space to allocate to what partition is archace and a left over from 15 years ago. Use a separate partition large enough (plus room for growth) for your data, one for boot and the rest for /. No more guessing as to how much space you need for home.
We can argue until we're blue in the face but I don't think you really mean this......
If I then do a fresh install (I always do) then I am supposed to lose my bookmarks, documents in the doc file, my Mail directory etc etc.
No! That is why you are creating the "data" partition for. Copy the stuff you want to save there first, hell copy your whole home dir there first (which is what I do, actually to another PC) then do your fresh install. -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998 -- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com
On Thursday 01 June 2006 21:11, Ken Schneider wrote:
We can argue until we're blue in the face but I don't think you really mean this......
If I then do a fresh install (I always do) then I am supposed to lose my bookmarks, documents in the doc file, my Mail directory etc etc.
No! That is why you are creating the "data" partition for. Copy the stuff you want to save there first, hell copy your whole home dir there first (which is what I do, actually to another PC) then do your fresh install.
Ok Ken.... you're not arguing with the OP on this... but me. So he copies all of his current /home to be /data (or just remounts it) and then leaves his 'home' in the root. What has he gained? He's been separated from all the things I mentioned above.... mail, bookmarks, etc. They are still there on /data but they are not easily used from there. And the next time he builds a new system what does he do? Now he COPIES his home dir over to somewhere else? Just don't think this is a good plan and not many of us would follow it. -- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com
People have argued this back and forth on different merits. Not one of them has been how us "old UNIX weenies" have often addressed it for decades. So might I interject** ... ;-> - TLD /home isn't always the most ideal ... consider a subdirectory First off, many of us just leave the top-level directory (TLD) /home on the / (root) filesystem. But then we create and mount a "local data" filesystem under /home -- maybe the systemname -- e.g., /home/mypc. If the system is really dedicated to a select user, or group of users (e.g., multiple X terminals to one host), then it could be their names. Why might we do this? - Never assume a "data" is "local data" ... especially with 2+ systems Because, secondly, we may be mounting other filesystems via NFS or AFS from other systems. This is why we create and mount a "local data" filesystem under a subdirectory of /home, and not /home itself -- because it might be a "peer" to network-mounted directories. From the standpoint of the software -- /home/pcA, /home/pcB or /home/pcC could be the local PC, or it could be a remote NFS mount -- the software doesn't care. Which brings me to the next concept ... - With 2+ systems, consider taking 10 minutes to learn the automounter Third, in reality, we usually do _not_ like to create and mount filesystems that might be "shared" aka "exported" on /home. In fact, we like to use /home as a "concentration point" for either mounts, or symlinks to mounts -- or as a main "automounter" root. As such, on most systems, we create "local data" filesystems under a new TLD, /export, and then automount all filesystems (even the local) under /home. E.g., on a network with a server and 3 PCs, I might have the following filesystems ... server1:/export/accounting server1:/export/engineering server1:... pcA:/export/pcA pcA:/export/pcB pcB:/export/pcC On a SOHO network (<6 nodes), I'll just directly create the automounter maps on each system. On a larger network, I'll then use either NIS or LDAP to publish automounter maps, so they are all automounted under /home on _all_ systems whenever they are accessed. [ Technical note: We typically want to avoid cross-mounts on the server, long story, so I might put server exports and pc exports in different automounter maps. And on the server, I wouldn't use the pc export automounter map. ] - Back on point: What should he do? Take a note from all this ... Now in this case, we doesn't need to be concerned with /export and NFS or automounting. But if _anyone_ is going to suggest a "best practice," I think it should start with the idea that you _might_ have more than 1 "data" filesystem at some point (regardless of systems, networking, etc...). *SO* might I suggest the new system have a filesystem called: /home/pcname And just mount this new, "local data" directory in /home/pcname under /home, where /home is just a subdirectory of the / (root) filesystem. If you're thinking ahead, are putting your user data under it, but don't want to label it system-specific, then consider using a domain name, subdomain name (e.g., location or department) or something else. E.g., I have more than one location with a server, so I use /home/oviedo (Oviedo, FL USA) on my main, home server. I also have a media server which is mounted as /home/static (static content). My home directory is /home/oviedo/bjsmith. My systems don't know if that's local or remote -- and they don't care. They just know it's /home/oviedo/bjsmith. -- Bryan J. Smith Professional, technical annoyance mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org http://thebs413.blogspot.com ------------------------------------------------------- Illegal Immigration = "Representation Without Taxation" -- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com
On Thursday 01 June 2006 19:02, Bruce Marshall wrote:
Ok Ken.... you're not arguing with the OP on this... but me.
So he copies all of his current /home to be /data (or just remounts it) and then leaves his 'home' in the root. What has he gained? He's been separated from all the things I mentioned above.... mail, bookmarks, etc. They are still there on /data but they are not easily used from there.
And the next time he builds a new system what does he do? Now he COPIES his home dir over to somewhere else? Just don't think this is a good plan and not many of us would follow it.
I always do a clean install, but I skip every other point release, using apt to stay up to date (I'll have to find another solution for the apt part ;-( ) I keep some data in my home directory (own partition), but I also have a /common partition for music, photos, wallpapers, software, etc, as well as a separate partition for my development stuff. The only stuff I keep in ~ is in Desktop/, some stuff in Documents/, and the few important hidden files like my mail archive. Anyway, I wrote a simple rsync script that I use to mirror all the important stuff (as noted above) on my computer to an old PII. This gets run weekly as part of my backup strategy. Bottom line is I could do a fresh install, and the only stuff I would loose is my KDE settings. I would tell the OP to make a full backup, just to be safe. Then can mirror just the important stuff to restore after the fresh install. Mark -- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com
On Thu, 2006-06-01 at 22:02 -0400, Bruce Marshall wrote:
On Thursday 01 June 2006 21:11, Ken Schneider wrote:
We can argue until we're blue in the face but I don't think you really mean this......
If I then do a fresh install (I always do) then I am supposed to lose my bookmarks, documents in the doc file, my Mail directory etc etc.
No! That is why you are creating the "data" partition for. Copy the stuff you want to save there first, hell copy your whole home dir there first (which is what I do, actually to another PC) then do your fresh install.
Ok Ken.... you're not arguing with the OP on this... but me.
So he copies all of his current /home to be /data (or just remounts it) and then leaves his 'home' in the root. What has he gained? He's been separated from all the things I mentioned above.... mail, bookmarks, etc. They are still there on /data but they are not easily used from there.
And the next time he builds a new system what does he do? Now he COPIES his home dir over to somewhere else? Just don't think this is a good plan and not many of us would follow it.
You copy back to home the things you need, your bookmarks, mail etc., allowing you to start with as little baggage from the old system as is necessary in the new system. You also end up with more usable space because there is no need to guess as to how much space you need. I never run with more than three main partitions small /boot, swap and the rest to /. I have an extra drive dedicated for storage that never gets touched during install. -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998 -- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com
Ken Schneider wrote:
You copy back to home the things you need, your bookmarks, mail etc., allowing you to start with as little baggage from the old system as is necessary in the new system. You also end up with more usable space because there is no need to guess as to how much space you need. I never run with more than three main partitions small /boot, swap and the rest to /. I have an extra drive dedicated for storage that never gets touched during install.
With logical volumes, you can assign only as much space as you need and then grow a partition later, if necessary. -- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com
On Fri, 2006-06-02 at 10:08 -0400, James Knott wrote:
Ken Schneider wrote:
You copy back to home the things you need, your bookmarks, mail etc., allowing you to start with as little baggage from the old system as is necessary in the new system. You also end up with more usable space because there is no need to guess as to how much space you need. I never run with more than three main partitions small /boot, swap and the rest to /. I have an extra drive dedicated for storage that never gets touched during install.
With logical volumes, you can assign only as much space as you need
And how much is that at the start? It is only a guess on your part depending on how much software you load. With my setup there is no guess, 50M for /boot 1G for swap all the rest for users and programs. LVM was created because, at the time, disks were -expensive- and it was a means of having more disk space available for a single partition. I think some people today are getting the false impression that LVM carries some sort of fail over which it does not. LVM is like a chain, it is no stronger that it's weakest link. In the case of LVM it is the disk that is on the verge of failing. -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998 -- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com
Bruce Marshall wrote:
There are arguments both ways... some say that keeping the old home can cause settings problems. I think I'd rather deal with that than lose a bunch of stuff.
Never had a problem keeping my /home separate.
Same here. And some of my /home are NFS-mounted. /Per Jessen, Zürich -- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com
On Thursday 01 June 2006 15:53, Ken Schneider wrote:
Why separate /home at all. Trying to guess how much space to allocate to what partition is archace and a left over from 15 years ago. Use a separate partition large enough (plus room for growth) for your data, one for boot and the rest for /. No more guessing as to how much space you need for home.
I don't know about these ideas, Kevin and Ken. Planning the amount of space for a /data partition is really no different than planning space for a /home partition, right? Isn't it the same question, ultimately? It seems to me like it's just an exercise in shifting shares of storage space around. And what, exactly, is gained by splitting out data while leaving user profiles and preferences, bookmarks, etc. on the same partition as '/'? My understanding is that the whole purpose behind splitting /home off as a separate partition is to help preserve the integrity of the overall system... by keeping user profiles, preferences *and* data isolated from the relative volatility/fragility of the system core... and vice versa. My approach to your situation, Kevin, would be to retain /home... which isn't normally formatted during installation (unless it's empty)... move /kevin to /.kevin so the 'create user' portion of the installation process creates a completely new user environment. This strategy gains you immediate access to your previous profile, preferences and data (in Konqueror or a shell) for ad hoc, or "piecemeal" 'porting' into your new environment. And, yes, I'd backup everything important beforehand. regards, Carl -- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com
participants (8)
-
Bruce Marshall -
Bryan J. Smith -
Carl Hartung -
James Knott -
Ken Schneider -
Mark A. Taff -
mlist＠safenet-inc.com -
Per Jessen