Re: /home partition
alex wrote:
I opted for a separate partition (hda2) for /home during the
installation of Debian and it was duly formatted. However, the
partition doesn't seem to be as performing as a /home directory.
Instead, the regular /home directory under / seems to be doing
the job.
So something went wrong during the install.
Either you or the installed did something wrong.
If it was the installer, it is a bug.
But it only takes one wrong key-stroke to tell the installer something
you do not want to do.
I read the data in hda2 but there's nothing there except
./ and ../.
How do you read it? Where do you access the partition?
Did you mount it someplace else?
When I read the regular /home directory (under /), all the
usual /home data is present.
If hda2 is mounted correctly you will not notice the difference
with commands like ls or applications that give you file-dialogs.
What does 'df -h' tell you?
The partition (hda2) doen't appear in /etc/fstab --nothing there
shows that there is a separate partition for /home.
Is it necessary to edit /etc/fstab and manually enter a line
for hda2 to show that it is the /home directory? If so, what should
this entry be?
If everything went fine during install, there is no necessity.
But since in your case something went wrong, you will need to edit fstab.
The actual line will look something like:
/dev/hda2 ext2 /home defaults 0 0
depending on the type of filesystem you use.
But remember: Mounting a partition 'on top' of an existing directory
will hide the original contents. The diskspace will not be freed by
itself. So you will need to take care of your original data before
making the change.
Since that is a topic which comes up quite often, I have put some info
together here:
http://stefan.waidele.info/Re_My_partition_is_full_Do_I_need_to_reinstall.html
What's a possible reason why the /home partition didn't 'take' during
the installation process? Is it always necessary to do some
post-installation editing (/etc/fstab ??) after a partition is selected
for a /directory?
No.
HTH,
Stefan
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