APwrs
08-10-2005, 01:21 AM
On a single-user machine, what's the advantage of having / and /home mapped to seperate partitions, instead of just having one big partition?
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je_fro
08-10-2005, 02:35 AM
two advantages...if you have corruption in one, it won't affect the other, and you can install multiple distros while keeping the same home...
Icarus
08-10-2005, 01:12 PM
keeping the same home with multiple distros is asking for trouble. I tried that once and got version conflicts and various errors all over. It's better to link directories that you know work between distros then trying to keep software versions in sync (even then different distros do different things)
The biggest advantage of keeping /home off the / partition is on multi-user systems where there are more then one user on at once (remote). If the /home gets 100% full, the OS won't crash (I've never seen it actually crash in this case, but odd things start to happen when it can't write to log files and /tmp ;))
The biggest advantage of keeping /home off the / partition is on multi-user systems where there are more then one user on at once (remote). If the /home gets 100% full, the OS won't crash (I've never seen it actually crash in this case, but odd things start to happen when it can't write to log files and /tmp ;))
infiniphunk
08-10-2005, 02:21 PM
I've also had problems in the past with trying to share /home between different installed distros, but it can be done. For starters, you had better make sure that your "shared" users have the same UID on each distro. Also, its worth taking into consideration that when you create a new user and install new apps its gonna change things in your /home/user that are important for configuration purposes, like .bashrc for example.
If you want to share a /home between distros, its always a good idea to back up your /home so that you can restore it if things go wrong after installing other distros.
Anyway, yeah, the obvious benenfit of keeping / and /home separate is that you're not always having to set up all your apps again if you have to reinstall the OS. Doing it this way has saved me hours of work.
Oh, and BTW, here (http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/11802.html) is a good link for you to read on keeping /home separate and sharing it between distros. Hope it helps.
If you want to share a /home between distros, its always a good idea to back up your /home so that you can restore it if things go wrong after installing other distros.
Anyway, yeah, the obvious benenfit of keeping / and /home separate is that you're not always having to set up all your apps again if you have to reinstall the OS. Doing it this way has saved me hours of work.
Oh, and BTW, here (http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/11802.html) is a good link for you to read on keeping /home separate and sharing it between distros. Hope it helps.
APwrs
08-10-2005, 04:30 PM
Thank you all for your replies so far.
It would seem then that the main advantages, really, are in a multi-user environment, or when you want to install multiple distros.
So am I correct in assuming then that, other than the above mentioned situations, on a single-user, single-distro system, there really is no advantage to having seperate partitions instead of just one big partition?
It would seem then that the main advantages, really, are in a multi-user environment, or when you want to install multiple distros.
So am I correct in assuming then that, other than the above mentioned situations, on a single-user, single-distro system, there really is no advantage to having seperate partitions instead of just one big partition?
IsaacKuo
08-10-2005, 04:42 PM
If for some reason you need to reinstall your OS, or you want to try out a different distribution, then you really want to have seperate partitions for your OS and your data. To some extent, having that main data partition be /home can be convenient--it can let you retain a lot of preference settings which are stored in /home (mostly in hidden files). However, I find it more convenient to leave /home on the small OS partition, and manually symlinking a "standard" data directory in the big data partition.
My partitions tend to be set up like:
hda1 2.5-6gigs /
hda5 .5gigs swap
hda6 therest /mnt/hda6
In hda6, I have a single directory called "data", and this is symlinked from /home/USERNAME/data.
If I want to replace/reinstall the OS, then I first copy my home directory files and after installation I'll manually copy over whatever preference files I want to keep. I like it this way since:
1. I can make a simple backup of my OS partition to store my current configuration INCLUDING all user preferences.
and
2. A lot of distributions litter my home directory with all sorts of extra crud. By manually copying over preference files, I can avoid this litter infesting my main data partition.
My partitions tend to be set up like:
hda1 2.5-6gigs /
hda5 .5gigs swap
hda6 therest /mnt/hda6
In hda6, I have a single directory called "data", and this is symlinked from /home/USERNAME/data.
If I want to replace/reinstall the OS, then I first copy my home directory files and after installation I'll manually copy over whatever preference files I want to keep. I like it this way since:
1. I can make a simple backup of my OS partition to store my current configuration INCLUDING all user preferences.
and
2. A lot of distributions litter my home directory with all sorts of extra crud. By manually copying over preference files, I can avoid this litter infesting my main data partition.
apeekaboo
08-10-2005, 06:35 PM
I use this partition scheme on my WS:[eek@apeekaboo [00:23:14] senora]$ df
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda3 283M 145M 138M 52% /
/dev/hda6 4.7G 2.3G 2.5G 49% /usr
/dev/hda7 761M 169M 593M 23% /var
/dev/hda8 99G 96G 3.4G 97% /home
/dev/hda1 79G 16G 63G 21% /mnt/xp
/dev/hda2 2.0G 1.9G 78M 97% /mnt/delad
tmpfs 1.8G 12M 1.8G 1% /tmp
227G 166G 62G 74% /mnt/warhammer1
150G 145G 4.7G 97% /mnt/warhammer2
Separating partitions give you benefits like:
* being able to mount them with different options
* makes reinstall easier (keeps /home intact)
* logs don't eat up your disk, thus making the system halt
* easier backups (depending on how you make your backups)
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda3 283M 145M 138M 52% /
/dev/hda6 4.7G 2.3G 2.5G 49% /usr
/dev/hda7 761M 169M 593M 23% /var
/dev/hda8 99G 96G 3.4G 97% /home
/dev/hda1 79G 16G 63G 21% /mnt/xp
/dev/hda2 2.0G 1.9G 78M 97% /mnt/delad
tmpfs 1.8G 12M 1.8G 1% /tmp
227G 166G 62G 74% /mnt/warhammer1
150G 145G 4.7G 97% /mnt/warhammer2
Separating partitions give you benefits like:
* being able to mount them with different options
* makes reinstall easier (keeps /home intact)
* logs don't eat up your disk, thus making the system halt
* easier backups (depending on how you make your backups)
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