Installing with separate /home partition & bug #150670

Wed Feb 25 09:31:46 UTC 2009

Bug 150670 is almost 4 years old.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=150670

I'd like to see if we can get agreement on changing the default 
partitioning in anaconda to separate /home & "/".

I think this is vital, especially since live upgrades aren't 
"officially" supported, and many support docs recommend separating "/" & 
home, and doing a clean install when upgrading fedora versions.

Here is a roundup of relevant stuff from wiki, bugzilla, lists.
=============================================================

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2005-March/msg00012.html 
Mailing list discussion from fedora-docs list.

from 
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/install-guide/f10/en_US/sn-partitioning-advice.html
"If you expect that you or other users will store data on the system, 
create a separate partition for the /home directory within a volume 
group. With a separate /home partition, you may upgrade or reinstall 
Fedora without erasing user data files."

from 
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/install-guide/f10/en_US/sn-upgrade-tree.html 
"! Installations are Recommended.
In general, the Fedora Project recommends that you keep user data on a 
separate /home partition and perform a fresh installation. For more 
information on partitions and how to set them up, refer to Chapter 12, 
Disk Partitioning."

from http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DistributionUpgrades
"Tips.
* It's a good idea to have a backup of your system before performing an 
upgrade. If you have /home in a separate logical volume or partition, it 
makes backing up user data easier. This is a feature requested for the 
Fedora Installer. See Bug 150670 for more on this."
* Doing a clean installation and then restoring user data from backups 
is known to work better."

from: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/YumUpgradeFaq
"Although upgrades with yum have been tested and work, live upgrades are 
not recommended by the Fedora Project. If you are not prepared to 
resolve issues on your own if things break, you should probably use the 
recommend installation methods instead.
The recommended installation method is with a boot media with the 
Anaconda installer as detailed in the Installation Guide"

Proposals for /home, "/" split:
========================================

Here's a breakdown of proposals from bug report:

* smaller of 50/50 or 20Gb for "/". /home gets rest.
from https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=150670#c17:
"Autopartitioning logic:
/boot --size=100
/  --size=400 --grow --maxsize=20048
/home --size=100 --grow"

* smaller of 50/50 or 10Gb for "/". /home gets rest.

* don't separate /home from "/"

* don't allocate all disk space so can increase sizes
later.

The 1st one seemed to get the most agreement.

Can we please decided once and for all on the best default partition scheme.

Thanks,

Lex.

PS - remember we're talking about the default, and us advanced users can 
always custom partition to our hearts content.
Bug 150670 is almost 4 years old.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=150670