Re: Separate /home drive?

[Kent West <westk@acu.edu>]

David Palmer. wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I've been reading different partitioning howtos but can't find any
> reference to a situation I thought I would like to install.
> It's probably a newbie idea, but I wondered if it would be possible to
> have system partitions on one drive, and posting to /home on another.
> If it is possible,

Sure, easy.

 does anybody have a reference they could point me to?


It depends on where you're starting from. Assuming you have a functional 
system, and you've just added in a new drive:

1) Partition the new drive, say "cfdisk /dev/hdb". To keep things 
conceptually easy here, we'll assume the entire drive will be one 
partition. So create a new partition, using the entire drive. It'll be 
of type "linux".

2) Format the new partition, say "mkfs /dev/hdb1".

3) Inform /etc/fstab of the new partition, say:

/dev/hdb1  /home  ext2  rw   0    2

4) Temporarily mount your new partition, say:
	mkdir /tmpHome
	mount /dev/hdb1 /tmpHome

5) Copy over your existing /home directory, say "cp -a /home/ /tmpHome"

6) Switch to single user mode, say "init S".

7) Make sure /home is not mounted, say
	mount
	if it's mounted, "umount /home"

8) Rename your current home directory, say "mv /home /home.bak"

9) Create a new home directory, with the same permissions/ownership as 
the old one, say:
	mkdir /home
	ls -ld /home.bak (to see old perms)
	chown and chmod as necessary

10) Mount the new directory to make sure it looks right, say:
	mount /home

11) Return to normal mode, say "init 2".

That should do it.

--
Kent