hard connecting a usb drive

[Tim Hanson]

I own a couple of laptops running 10.04.  Inevitably, one of them has become 
something of a de facto "desktop," which mostly stays at home connected to a 
larger screen as well as a better keyboard and mouse, while the other I use in 
the traditional role as a travelling companion.

I'm getting tired of trying to keep them synchronized all the time.  What I'd 
like to try is to put my home directory on a usb drive. 

The downside is that I would always have to have that drive plugged in on boot 
to either laptop.  The upside is that I would always be assured I am working 
with an up-to-date home directory, regardless of the computer I am using, at 
all times.  I could also avoid constantly waiting for rsync to work.

I tried to replace /home/foo with a symlink to /foo on my usb drive, which 
didn't work.  It looks to me as if certain items necessary to loading a 
desktop aren't present when GNOME needs them (probably before the auto mount 
utility mounts the drive).

My next attempt will be to put the usb drive directly into /etc/fstab.  I have 
read the blkid man page to find out the drive's UUID.  Can anyone find any 
pitfalls to this approach?  Will the automount utility (it used to be HAL, but 
now it might be something else) try to mount it again?