moving /home [Solved - HowTo]

[Claude Jones]

On Sun December 4 2005 9:47 am, Claude Jones wrote:
> I would like to move my home directory to a new 300GB SATA drive - I edit
> video, so I need lots of space.
> I've installed the hardware, and using qtparted I've formatted it as ext3 -
> in qtparted it appears as sda1
> My current mounts:
>
> /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol02 on / type ext3 (rw)
> /dev/proc on /proc type proc (rw)
> /dev/sys on /sys type sysfs (rw)
> /dev/devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
> /dev/hdb1 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
> /dev/shm on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
> /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 on /home type ext3 (rw)
> /dev/hda1 on /mnt/windows type ntfs (ro,umask=0222,gid=100)
> none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
> /proc on /var/named/chroot/proc type none (rw,bind)
> sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)
>
> I'm caught in a circular logic trap and I can't figure out what to do next.
> I've read the mount and fstab man pages, and googled this issue, but I'm
> missing something. What would be the next step?
>

The long thread that followed this original query for help was the result of 
my having to overcome many years of experience administering Windows based 
file systems. I won't attempt to write a dissertation on the differences 
between Linux and Windows file systems and media organization, but, in the 
hope that it may be of use, here are the steps that worked. 

1) Install new drive: 
After physical installation and a reboot, I opened qtparted (Linux 
partitioning/formatting tool) - qtparted recognized the drive immediately as 
sda.  I created a single partition on my new drive and formatted it as ext3.

2) Create a temporary mount point: 
I created a new directory in /mnt calling it "mynewhome"

3) Boot into runlevel 1: 
Restart the computer and at the first Fedora splash screen press the letter 
'a' on keyboard. This halts the boot process and brings up the kernel line. 
At the end of that line typ '1' (the number one without quotes), and press 
the enter key - this boots the machine into runlevel 1 or single user mode.
 
4) Mount drive to new directory:
When the prompt comes up, mount the new drive to the directory previously 
created in /mnt (step 2 above)
'mnt /dev/sda1 /mnt/mynewhome'
(the '1' is added to 'sda' to indicate the first partition on drive sda - even 
though there is only one partition on the drive, this is the syntax that must 
be used, else the command will fail)

5) Copy the contents of current home folder to the new drive:
'cp -a/home/* /mnt/mynewhome'
(this step is important to get right - it takes all the contents of the 
current /home and copies them to the root of the new drive, sda1, now mounted 
as /mnt/mynewhome - you want everything BELOW /home to be transferred to this 
new location - also, when copying the contents of /home to the new location, 
you want all the attributes of the files preserved which is what the '-a' 
option to the 'cp' command does - read the 'man cp' pages for details of this 
command)

6) Edit the fstab file:
This file is read at boot time by your system, and mounts your drives to the 
correct locations in your directory structure.
There are a limited number of text editors available at the command line. I 
use 'joe':
'joe /etc/fstab'
This opens the file in text editing mode. Find the line that contains the 
mount for the current home - on my system it looked like this:
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00   /home  ext3    defaults   1 2
Comment this line by adding a '#' to front of it. 
Now, add the line that will mount your new home - mine looked liked this:
/dev/sda1	   /home	ext3	  defaults	1 2
If you use the 'joe' editor to to do this, then 'ctl-k' followed 's' will ask 
you if you want to save it; pressing 'enter' will save. 'ctl-k' followed by 
'q' will exit joe. 

7) Reboot - if you got it all right, your machine should boot normally, but 
using the new /home. If you made a mistake, you haven't altered anything 
irreparably. You can revert the edited 'fstab' file to its prior state 
easily, and be back where you started. All your old /home files will still be 
there...

After this has all run in a stable fashion for a few days, I will then tackle 
how to eliminate the logical volume group 00, and take that space and add it 
my logical volume group 01, which is where my '/' (the rest of the file 
system) is mounted. 

Hope this of future help to someone, and thanks to all who helped me to figure 
this out. 

-- 
Claude Jones
Bluemont, VA, USA