moving /home [Solved - HowTo]

Jeff Vian jvian10 at charter.net
Mon Dec 5 20:17:00 UTC 2005


On Mon, 2005-12-05 at 09:29 -0500, Claude Jones wrote:
> 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?
> >
> 


Your comments below show you have gotten it right.  Congratulations on
learning new concepts and procedures.

In spite of >10 years using Linux I still find a lot of things that I
need assistance with and I am always glad to give back some of the help
I have received over the years.  The rapid change rate means you will
never be done learning new things with Linux.

> 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
> 




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