Feature suggestions: optionally placing home folder into separate partition during ubuntu install

[Phill Whiteside]

Hiyas Daniel,

I'd also like to see the simple ability to make (and recommend) a /home
partion rather than ask a n00b to delve into the tender mercies of manual
partitioning. Hopefully, one day the dev team may catch their breath and
incorporate it. :)

Regards,

Phill.

On 26 December 2010 13:20, Daniel Gross <daniel.gross at utoronto.ca> wrote:

> Hello
>
> I just had a really bad experience while working with Ubuntu 10.10,
> which suggested to me another reason for having a separate home folder.
>
> My ext4 boot partition with all my data became inaccessible -- not mountable, not checkable, only
>
> accessible via dd or ddrescue, but the data coming out is very partial (the image i am getting
> claims to be of type ext2, for some reason, so can't be checked either).
>
> I had just started a new virtual machine, and then the hard drive started spinning at "full speed",
>
> with the computer not responding. After a while I felt that the only way out is a hard reset.
>
> Unfortunately, either the spinning out of control, or the hard reset, or both, have
> damaged the ext4 partition in a significant way. Interestingly, a second NTFS partition (with my preinstalled windows xp pro on it)
>
> wasn't affected, and i was able to boot windows xp without problems, but not able to access the
> ext4 partition, also not with a special ext4 file system utility.
>
> After much trial and error i still can not properly access the ext4 partition, getting a "drive exclusively in use by
>
> other process or mounted error?".
>
> I happened to have another 320 SATA drive around, which i am not freshly installing with ubuntu 10.10.
> To avoid such problems with the boot partition in the future, I decided to the the following
>
> partitioning scheme.
>
> Ubuntu Boot partition -- 40 GB, ext4
> Primary NTFS partition of size 220 GB, mounted at /windows
> Primary NTFS partition of size 60 GB, not mounted.
>
> My plan is to move my home directory to the 220GB partition.
>
> Like this if the ubuntu ext4 boot partition fails again, i will hopefully be
> able to access all my data from both windows and ubuntu rescue facilities.
>
> So, the reason to move the home directory to a different partition (and file system type), relates to not putting all your files in
>
> one ext4 boot partition basket.
>
> Daniel
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 8:01 PM, Daniel Gross <daniel.gross at utoronto.ca <https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss>> wrote:
>
> >* Hello,
> *>*
> *>* I have finally taken the plunge and installed the latest Ubuntu instead
> *>* of Windows XP (while still running Windows xp in a VM).
> *
> Congrats :)
>
> >* It would be great if a tool existed that supports moving the home folder
> *>* from the "boot" partition to a "data" partition. Ideally, the tool would
> *>* support creating a data partition by resizing the boot partition, as
> *>* well as recommending a minimum size for the data partition based on the
> *>* size of the home folder.
> *>*
> *>* Ideally, i think, such a setup could already be suggested during the
> *>* Ubuntu installation process. Perhaps, under an "advanced setup" heading
> *>* -- removing the need to move the home partition.
> *>*
> *>* The main benefit for such a setup, is that it allows reinstalling Ubuntu
> *>* without loosing the users data, which would be safely sitting in a
> *>* separate data partition.
> *
> Putting it on a separate partition isn't actually necessary. Currently
> when Ubuntu is directed to install to a partition which previously had
> Ubuntu on it, it reinstalls only what is necessary, leaving things
>
> such as user settings intact. So this is effectively already done,
> just without the necessity for multiple partitions.
>
> >* Also, during (re)installation, Ubuntu could recognize the existence of a
> *>* data partition that includes a home folder, and suggest configuring
> *>* itself accordingly.
> *
> This is an interesting idea. I'm not sure what we currently suggest
> when another Ubuntu is already installed, but a kind of
> reinstall/upgrade option would probably be useful. Again, we'd only
>
> need the one partition for it though.
>
> >* Taking this idea a step further, perhaps its possible to also preserve
> *>* the packages that were installed, so that these remain intact in the
> *>* data partition also. Perhaps a better name for the data partition could
> *>* be "User" partition, which includes all user configured, tailored,
> *>* created data. As opposed to the System partition which includes the base
> *>* OS only, and that can be reinstalled at will.
> *
> Technically, every part of Ubuntu (including the base OS) is
> considered just an installed package, so doing this wouldn't be
> simple. I'm also having trouble seeing the use case for this - most
> people (in my experience) reinstall Ubuntu as a way to clean up cruft
>
> (or apparent cruft - a fresh install often feels faster just by
> placebo effect). Presumably they would want such packages removed,
> else why would they reinstall? They're may be something I'm missing,
> but I can't see "reinstalling while keeping current packages" to be a
>
> common desire.
>
> You've raised some very interesting points, all of which merit further
> discussion.
> Enjoy your shiny new Ubuntu :)
>
> Cheers,
> Evan
>
>
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