default partition scheme without /home - why ?

[James Hubbard]

On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 10:56 AM, Felix Miata <mrmazda at ij.net> wrote:
>  > Felix Miata wrote:
>
>  >> I can't imagine a newbie not welcoming the intelligence of a separate /home
>  >> when they blindly reinstall after screwing something up, like an upgrade to a
>  >> newer version 6 months later, shortly followed by trying again with reformat
>  >> of /. You think most people, particularly the clueless, actually have backups
>  >> of their personal data? If you do I think you're dreaming of utopia.
>
>  > They can still use the upgrade option and not reformat /.
>
>  Did you miss the part about "after screwing something up"? That would include
>  a botched upgrade, for whatever reason, following which a fresh install on a
>  reformatted / would be the natural and possibly only solution. It's a not
>  uncommon situation.

I agree that having a /home here would make this situation a little
easier to resolve.  But the best advice here is have them do an
install instead of an upgrade and not format the disc.  If that
doesn't work, my only other thought is to have them mount in rescue
mode and blow away the /usr /etc /lib /bin and /var (anything that
isn't /home).  Next, have them reboot and do an install.  At that
point you would hope that person would think about doing backups
before upgrading a system.

You can only provide so much protection.