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Author Topic:  Should I move my home directory off my main drive?  (Read 2249 times)

David

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I've heard a lot of people like to have their home directory on a seperate drive so they can use the same home folder between distros.


1) How dangerous is this? Are there a lot of config conflicts?
2) What are the advantages?
3) Have you tried it? what results did you get?


I ask because I've been considering for a while the possibility of using debian buster when it gets its stable release on my 3rd hard drive (which has, so far, been merely a backup drive for my main siduction install)


This way, I'd still be able to use the latest packages on siduction but I could also rely on debian stable to always ALWAYS boot up when I need to do some work.


I love debian unstable, and siduction is the most stable OS i've ever used, but I don't trust it to always ALWAYS boot up when I need to do work.

Offline ReinerS

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Re: Should I move my home directory off my main drive?
« Reply #1 on: 2019/03/05, 21:24:14 »
Hmm, I always place my /home on an seperate partition even by using just one Linux.
I feel it more secure in case things go wrong with the OS itself.
regards
Reiner
« Last Edit: 2019/03/06, 00:15:17 by ReinerS »
slackware => SuSE => kanotix => sidux => aptosid  => siduction

Offline piper

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  • we are the priests ... of the temples of syrinx
Re: Should I move my home directory off my main drive?
« Reply #2 on: 2019/03/05, 21:49:00 »
I don’t use a separate /home,  I have a partition  >  /my shit  < that has all my stuff like > /my shit/movies  < and > /my shit/music < /my shit/kde < etc....

 /home has settings that can be os dependent/package version dependent. I have seen some messed up things with /home, especially mixing one from a different distro or using one spread out across the system using many distro's.

Just not worth it to me.

The problem using /home from a "stable" version to a "rolling release" version is asking for trouble imho (.kde, apps, config, etc.) different version number of apps (stable, ubuntu would be much older), dependencies (stable, ubuntu would not be up to date, etc)

Installing a /home  is like driving a ford pinto.  :P

The whole key is to know what configs are important to you and back those up, saves space, time, headache. Kde is very easy

To be honest, if it was anyone else I would say "In the end it's your choice" but, with you, you better do a lot of reading on the subject, were not the Beatles  here, were not going to hold your hand
« Last Edit: 2019/03/05, 22:00:38 by piper »
Free speech isn't just fucking saying what you want to say, it's also hearing what you don't want to fucking hear

I either give too many fucks or no fucks at all, it's like I cannot find a middle ground for a moderate fuck distribution, it's like what the fuck

David

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Re: Should I move my home directory off my main drive?
« Reply #3 on: 2019/03/06, 05:31:55 »
I don’t use a separate /home,  I have a partition  >  /my shit  < that has all my stuff like > /my shit/movies  < and > /my shit/music < /my shit/kde < etc....

 /home has settings that can be os dependent/package version dependent. I have seen some messed up things with /home, especially mixing one from a different distro or using one spread out across the system using many distro's.

Just not worth it to me.

The problem using /home from a "stable" version to a "rolling release" version is asking for trouble imho (.kde, apps, config, etc.) different version number of apps (stable, ubuntu would be much older), dependencies (stable, ubuntu would not be up to date, etc)

Installing a /home  is like driving a ford pinto.  :P

The whole key is to know what configs are important to you and back those up, saves space, time, headache. Kde is very easy

To be honest, if it was anyone else I would say "In the end it's your choice" but, with you, you better do a lot of reading on the subject, were not the Beatles  here, were not going to hold your hand


I suspected as much about the configs. I had heard rumors about people using the same /home for arch and debian, and I should have dismissed them as fake immediately.


I ask you guys for advice before I try things, because I wonder how it has gone for people who have done it. I don't expect my hand to be held (if I did, I would have installed a redhat distro and not siduction).

Offline tommy2

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Re: Should I move my home directory off my main drive?
« Reply #4 on: 2019/03/06, 11:54:39 »
Being the gamer you say you are do you ask how this works or if I did this what would happen? If not why are you doing it here with Linux? I'm not sure as I don't game but believe it is something like using Linux, that is do something wrong or stupid it's game over. Hell that's the ground rules for and basic principles of Linux if you do something wrong you back up and regroup and move forward. You don't need to ask just do it like gaming and learn from your experiences, when you run into the same wall a few times you either learn how to fix it or have enough information on how to ask informative questions from the forum members. That said have fun gaming with Linux!!  :)

Offline ralul

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Re: Should I move my home directory off my main drive?
« Reply #5 on: 2019/04/10, 21:48:09 »
Seperate partition for /home or not: It is easy to achieve.
More fine grained tuning is used to get several common data from different linux distributions.
See how I configured my user ids:
Quote
# grep dral /media/debian/etc/passwd ; grep gral /etc/passwd
ral:x:1000:100::/home/dral:/bin/bash
ral:x:1000:100::/home/gral:/bin/bash
The same name, the same user ids, but a different home directory. Now I have made extra directories:
Quote
# vdir /home
total 7
drwxrwxr-x 68 ral  users  4096  1. Apr 2019  Bilder
drwxrwx--- 35 ral  users  4096  7. Mai 2018  Config
drwxrwxr-x 22 ral  users  4096 21. Mär 15:22 Dokumente
drwxrwxr-x 12 ral  users  4096  9. Apr 14:23 Download
drwxr-xr-x 16 ral  users  4096  5. Apr 05:24 dral
drwxr-xr-x 36 ral  users  4096 10. Apr 18:01 gral
I can softlink ~/downloads and ~/documents to my common (Debian and Gentoo) /home/xxx directories.
Some applications do have for long the same version on both distributions. eg: firefox-60
For these I do have all the same data on both distros softlinking to their data directory:
Quote
vdir -A |grep -e'moz' -e'thund' -e'Do'
lrwxrwxrwx  1 ral  users     21  2. Apr 23:27 .mozilla -> /home/Config/.mozilla
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root      25 11. Sep 2016  .thunderbird -> /home/Config/.thunderbird
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root      15 11. Sep 2016  Dokumente -> /home/Dokumente
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root      22 11. Sep 2016  Public -> /home/Dokumente/Public
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root      24 11. Sep 2016  Templates -> /home/Dokumente/Vorlagen
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root      14 11. Sep 2016  downloads -> /home/Download
experiencing siduction runs better than my gentoo makes me know I know nothing

Offline vilde

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Re: Should I move my home directory off my main drive?
« Reply #6 on: 2019/04/11, 10:40:48 »
@ David, about the concern about using siduction and the possibility to find yourself in a position that the computer doesn't boot.
 I have been using this distro since, I don't now how many years since before the fork from Kanotix to Sidux? but it's a lot of years. I think it's only one time since that not being able to boot and that was something with the naming of the partitions that was solved by asking in the forum or maybe irc (of cause I had to use another computer for that) but you don't need that either because a usb stick to boot from and you are on the go to reach the forum and irc.
I have manage siduction on my mothers (she is 86 years old)  computer 7-8 years, she doesn't know the difference between google and a web browser, she doesn't really understand the what a "window" is on the screen. She can read her mails, scype with my brother who lives around the world and google some things for her crosswords.  But not one time she has been without the computer because of failure of sid(uction).

I wouldn't us the word unsafe or unstable about this distro.
« Last Edit: 2019/04/11, 20:10:44 by vilde »