Moving the /Home Partition, Permission Issues.

[Tuxman]

Marius Gedminas wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 01:29:09PM -0500, Tuxman wrote:
>   
>> I'm getting ready to install 10.4 (8.04 currently), and I need to 
>> rearrange some partitions in preparation.
>>
>> I need to move my /Home partition out of the way temporarily and the 
>> only place I have to move it to is an NTFS drive that can't be changed. 
>> I can handle all of the repartitioning with GParted without a problem, 
>> but I'm weak when it comes to Linux file/folder permission issues.
>>
>> Are there issues here?
>>     
>
> You can't copy the files and folders directly to NTFS, since you'll lose
> permission information.  Also, some of the filenames might be
> incompatible (e.g. Linux allows : in filenames, NTFS doesn't).
>
> A tar archive should be safe enough and would be my first choice:
>
>   sudo -s
>   cd /home
>   tar -czf /media/windows-partition/home.tar.gz --one-file-system .
>
> A direct filesystem image might be a bit faster, especially if you have
> a lot of small files, and the partition is close to full:
>
>   cd /
>   sudo -s
>   umount /home      # Never take an image of a mounted partition!
>   dd if=/dev/sdaX of=/media/windows-partition/home.img bs=32k
>
> however you need to make sure no programs are using /home, which means
> logging out of GNOME and doing everything from a text console or via
> SSH.  Also, by extracting a tar archive you're defragmenting the file
> system as a side effect, and you can also switch filesystem types (ext3 to
> ext4), which then get a chance to layout your files better for faster
> access.  (I wouldn't expect huge performance gains, though.  Maybe for
> dysfunctional cases like a single directory containing millions of
> files.)
>
> Now, restoring from a tar archive: create and format an empty partition
> (one that is large enough), then make sure it's mounted and
>
>   sudo -s
>   cd /home
>   tar -xzf /media/windows-partition/home.tar.gz
>
> To restore a disk image, you'd need to create a partition of exactly
> the same size (or larger), then swap the if and of arguments of dd:
>
>   sudo -s
>   umount /home         # safety check, it shouldn't have been mounted
>                        # since it doesn't have a valid filesystem,
>                        # but better safe than sorry
>   dd if=/media/windows-partition/home.img of=/dev/sdaX bs=32k
>   resize2fs /dev/sdaX  # Only if you made the new partition larger
>   mount /home
>
>   
>> How do I do this safely?
>>     
>
> Make backups!  Then even if something happens, you haven't lost your
> data.
>
> It helps a lot if you understand exactly what's happening instead of
> blindly following instructions and typing commands.
>
>   
>> If you can point me to a guide, that would be great. The more 
>> cookbookish the better.
>>     
>
> I'd love to, if I knew any good links...
>
> Have you tried searching on wiki.ubuntu.com?
>
> Marius Gedminas
>   
Thanks for the info. I'll read up on tar.

One thing I forgot to mention, I plan on booting from a live Ubuntu CD 
to do the moving and repartitioning.
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