Moving /home

[Dr U]

Hi,

I installed Knoppix 3.4 CeBit (remastered by iso-top) to my HDD and it is really nice :D. The HDD already had a 5 GB /home partition from a previous installation of another Linux distribution. Unfortunately I did not know about the trick for modifying .knoconf (or whatever it's called) and so the /home partition was not used.

I then found the HOWTO about moving /home to its own partition. I followed all of the steps exactly as described. However, after rebooting I still end up using the old /home rather than the one with its own partition. Running mount also shows that the partition has not been mounted :?

Is there something missing in the HOWTO or is it no longer able to be done this way :?: I really do not want to reinstall the system now that I have added and configured so many things...

Thanks in advance.

P.S.: in case I missed an answer to this somewhere in this forum, then please excuse me and just point me to the answer.

[OErjan]

have you changed the fstab?
to be able to help further it would be nice if you could post putput from
fdisk -l (and coment where you want your /home)
then post your fstab.

[stukennedyuk]

I had this problem when I ran out of space/wanted to use a new partition for my home directory. I changed fstab, but without going into detail, the change to fstab stopped me from viewing my existing /home directory, i.e. I remounted my new volume over the old /home directory. I puzzled for ages over this and in the end I didn't change fstab but instead I put a soft link in the home directory to the actual directory I wanted to use. (On the other partition).

This works but I bet it's not the correct way to do it! I expect you would have problems as you add new users, but this is no problem for me as I am the only user!

Stu.....

[OErjan]

if you mke a folde called home2 and mount the new partition there, i will assume ext3 as filesystem.

mount -t ext3 /dev/hdXY /home2
as root do a cp -avx /home/* /home2/
then unmount the /home2 change fstab so that the new home will be mounted under /home.
that is add the line.

/dev/hdXY /home ext3 defaults 1 2 replace the XY with the apropiate numbers. this SHOULD work. perhaps a
chown -R username:users /home/username is necesary (not likely) but that should be a quick operation...

[OErjan]

if you still want your old home, mount that under the users /home/username directory with fstab,
put line
/dev/hdAB /home/username/oldhome ext3 defaults 1 2
as above change the AB to apropriate value.

[Dr U]

First of all, thanks to everyone for replying!! :)

To OErjan: I changed fstab and the relevant lines are

/dev/hdc3 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1

(where the old /home resides), and

/dev/hdc4 /home ext3 defaults 0 0

(where the copy of the old /home resides (made as specified in the HOWTO with

cp -Rp * /mnt/hdc4/

executed as root from the old home directory). In response to your other request, the output of fdisk -l is "Konnte /dev/hdc nicht öffnen" (english: "Could not open /dev/hdc"). I will try your suggestion about creating /home2 etc. shortly and will report the results.

[Dr U]

OErjan,

I tried your suggested /home2 approach -- without success :(. What happened was that I could no longer login as the <username>, but instead got sent back to the login screen. I logged in as root and could mount /dev/hdc4 at /home but apparently the system could not do this.

I'm baffled :?

[fingers99]

Don't be baffled.

First, rename the old home (old_home) will do. Next create a new home directory alongside it.

Next mount the new home temporarily (something like -- adjust to suit your system) mount -t ext3 /dev/hdc? /home

Copy everything you want from /old_home to /home

edit your /etc/fstab. You want a line something like:

/dev/hdc3 /home ext3 auto 0 0

the auto here is crucial -- omit it and you'll have to remount it by hand every time you boot.

Reboot.

Chances are that you'll only be able to log in as root. Don't panic. As root (hell, use Kde to do it) chown home.

Once you're sure everything is OK, grab back a little space by deleting /old_home.

[Stephen]

The easiest way is to boot the knoppix CD with knoppix 2 dma then once at the command prompt.



mkfs.ext3 /dev/hdc4
mount /dev/hdc3 /mnt/hdc3
mount /dev/hdc4 /mnt/hdc4
cp -Rp /mnt/hdc3/home/* /mnt/hdc4/


Then edit the /etc/fstab and use this line for new /home.



/dev/hdc4 /home ext3 defaults 0 2


Reboot (shutdown -r now at the knoppix command line) and you should be using the new /home partition.

[fingers99]

Wow!

:shock:

[Dr U]

Hi, Fingers99!

Thank you for your suggestions -- unfortunately they did not change the results!! It seems that /dev/hdc4 will just not get mounted even though the entry is there in fstab. When I mount it at /home as root and then login as the user everything is OK. I don't know why this is happening.

Hi, Stephen!

Thank you also for your suggestions. I will try them next and report back.

I am hoping to get this to work as it is on the computer that my wife will be using and she has no desire to learn such Linux things as mounting as root, or performing other Linux admin-type tasks. She is a relative computer noobie who just wants to use the word processor, surf and do Email activities. Until now she has only been using Windows and I want to set this up for her to be as easy to use (but much more secure when on the net).

Hoping that you all have a nice Easter Holiday. :wink:

[OErjan]

post your whole fstab here, and whole output from fdisk -l (as root). soething is weird, it should work. i have done it several times, actually once as long ago as today.

[Rink]

>soething is weird,

Yeah, it really seems to be a little left field.

I think you are refering to my earlier post when you say you followed a "HOWTO".

I was merely describing how I solved a particular problem. I am not an expert on linux, though I do have a number of years experience.

[Dr U]

Hi, Rink!

I don't believe that I know about your post :oops:. The HOWTO that I followed is listed in the Knoppix.net Docs tab under the title "HomePartitionHowTo -- How to move your /home to a new partition". I will be trying some of the other suggestions that people have made in this thread and will post my fstab and output from fdisk -l (as root) as soon as I can get back on the machine (my wife is busy using it for some important work and I will have to wait until it is free).

Regards,

-- Dr. U