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

Daniel Gross daniel.gross at utoronto.ca
Thu Oct 28 05:51:20 UTC 2010


Hello Evan,

Thank you for your comments and clarifications. 

It's interesting to know that Ubuntu already takes care during a reinstall
of the home folder as well as user settings, when these already exist on the
partition. 

Thinking about the motivation I had to move the home folder to a separate
partition, I see that there could be several reasons why having the home
folder on a separate partition might still be useful. 

1. data safety -- in case the user by mistake formats the main partition
during the installation process. 

2. simplicity of reformatting -- in case the use wants to reformat the main
partition while keeping the "user" partition intact. 

3. simplicity of hard disk exchange -- in case the home folder resides on a
separate hard disk, 

4. I think there is also a psychological factor here. Currently, the user
needs to trust the Ubuntu reinstall process, that it doesn't touch the user
data and settings, with the data tucked away on a separate partition, it is
easier to trust Ubuntu that the data wouldn't be touched. 

5. install of other Linux instead or in addition to Ubuntu could benefit
from having a home folder either shared or untouched.

Will let you know if I can figure out some more motivations :-)


Re: Preserving packages after reinstall

You are right. Thinking about it again, I wanted to clean up my
installation, and also thought it might improve performance. Perhaps a
reinstall could offer a list of already installed packages, and the user can
select the subset of packages he/she wants to again include.


Thank you,

Daniel

-----Original Message-----
From: ubuntu-devel-discuss-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com
[mailto:ubuntu-devel-discuss-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com] On Behalf Of Evan
Huus
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2010 4:23 AM
To: ubuntu-devel-discuss at lists.ubuntu.com
Subject: Re: Feature suggestions: optionally placing home folder into
separate partition during ubuntu install

On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 8:01 PM, Daniel Gross <daniel.gross at utoronto.ca>
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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