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#1 2011-06-30 17:54:03

natpjohnson
Member
Registered: 2011-06-29
Posts: 16

Installing to home directory instead of root?

I just finished an istallation of Arch and I've noticed that all of my applications are being installed to root instead of my home folder like other distros I have used. How exactly would I make my installations through pacman install to "/home" instead of "/" ? Or should I expand my "/" partition? Im not completely sure of the whole situation, as I used auto partition and gave pretty much all of my harddrive to /home.

Any help given is greatly appreciated!

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#2 2011-06-30 17:56:08

Inxsible
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From: Chicago
Registered: 2008-06-09
Posts: 9,183

Re: Installing to home directory instead of root?

huh? all applications are supposed to install to /. /home only has user configuration files.


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#3 2011-06-30 18:05:21

natpjohnson
Member
Registered: 2011-06-29
Posts: 16

Re: Installing to home directory instead of root?

.......
So, basically, I just gave like 95 percent of my harddrive to a partition I won't even be using that much?
Great. Since its a relatively fresh installation, can I just expand the "/" partition?
Like how much would you reccomend I give of a 500 gig to the "/" and "/home" partitions?

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#4 2011-06-30 18:21:51

yasar11732
Member
Registered: 2010-11-29
Posts: 127

Re: Installing to home directory instead of root?

From : https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners'_Guide

From the guidelines above, the example system shall contain a ~15GB root (/) partition, ~10GB /var, 1GB swap, and a /home containing the remaining disk space.


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#5 2011-06-30 18:37:35

Inxsible
Forum Fellow
From: Chicago
Registered: 2008-06-09
Posts: 9,183

Re: Installing to home directory instead of root?

Use GParted Live to modify the sizes of your partitions. The partition sizes can only be a recommendation since only you know what you are going to install and how much space that would require.

If you like to install everything under the sun, then obviously you will require more space. If you are a minimalist and know what WM and/or applications you want, you might not require that much space.

My old laptop had a 40GB drive and I made do with a 5GB / of which about 65% was in use. My desktop has more space so I created a 7GB / of which only 48% is in use.


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#6 2011-06-30 22:02:55

Cdh
Member
Registered: 2009-02-03
Posts: 1,098

Re: Installing to home directory instead of root?

Don't listen too much. I play a bit around with my laptop and what do I see?

4,1G /opt
14G     /usr
1,7G /var

When I don't know exactly what I'll do with a computer I always put everything on one partition, because then I never have the problem of having not enaugh space on one but on the other. Reinstalling may be a bit harder but actually I didn't need to since 2008. And this system has gone through a failed and repaired 32bit-64bit migration and has been copied from my main pc to my laptop and it is still in pretty good shape. Only too much software installed. big_smile


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#7 2011-06-30 22:30:41

lukaszan
Member
Registered: 2011-05-05
Posts: 117

Re: Installing to home directory instead of root?

natpjohnson wrote:

I just finished an istallation of Arch and I've noticed that all of my applications are being installed to root instead of my home folder like other distros I have used.

Just out of interest, what distros where they ?

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#8 2011-07-01 13:12:38

Mr.Elendig
#archlinux@freenode channel op
From: The intertubes
Registered: 2004-11-07
Posts: 4,092

Re: Installing to home directory instead of root?

natpjohnson wrote:

.......
So, basically, I just gave like 95 percent of my harddrive to a partition I won't even be using that much?
Great. Since its a relatively fresh installation, can I just expand the "/" partition?
Like how much would you reccomend I give of a 500 gig to the "/" and "/home" partitions?

10-20gb is more than enough for / asuming you clear your cache from time to time and don't let logs fill it up.


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#9 2011-07-01 14:19:31

ConnorBehan
Package Maintainer (PM)
From: Long Island NY
Registered: 2007-07-05
Posts: 1,359
Website

Re: Installing to home directory instead of root?

To answer the original question, packages can be installed to /home by passing the "-r /home" flag to pacman. But I agree that this would give you issues with many packages if you didn't do some major patching and recompiling first.


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#10 2011-07-01 15:07:34

Maki
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From: Skopje, Macedonia
Registered: 2007-10-16
Posts: 353
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Re: Installing to home directory instead of root?

I have an 500 gb hard disk and of that 400 gb is my data partition (movies, music, apps windows games and pacman cache), 20 gb's for /root 20 for /home and the rest for toying with other OS'es. that way my data is safe.


If it ain't broke, broke it then fix it.

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#11 2011-07-01 15:12:31

lifeafter2am
Member
From: 127.0.0.1
Registered: 2009-06-10
Posts: 1,332

Re: Installing to home directory instead of root?

natpjohnson wrote:

I just finished an istallation of Arch and I've noticed that all of my applications are being installed to root instead of my home folder like other distros I have used.

FYI, this is completely non-standard behavior.  In 15 years of Linux and Unix I have never seen a distribution install anything to the home directory.


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#12 2011-07-01 22:05:48

Maki
Member
From: Skopje, Macedonia
Registered: 2007-10-16
Posts: 353
Website

Re: Installing to home directory instead of root?

lifeafter2am wrote:
natpjohnson wrote:

I just finished an istallation of Arch and I've noticed that all of my applications are being installed to root instead of my home folder like other distros I have used.

FYI, this is completely non-standard behavior.  In 15 years of Linux and Unix I have never seen a distribution install anything to the home directory.

I think he thinks about the hidden dot dirs in home, those are for configuration settings


If it ain't broke, broke it then fix it.

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#13 2011-07-01 22:16:15

lifeafter2am
Member
From: 127.0.0.1
Registered: 2009-06-10
Posts: 1,332

Re: Installing to home directory instead of root?

Maki wrote:
lifeafter2am wrote:
natpjohnson wrote:

I just finished an istallation of Arch and I've noticed that all of my applications are being installed to root instead of my home folder like other distros I have used.

FYI, this is completely non-standard behavior.  In 15 years of Linux and Unix I have never seen a distribution install anything to the home directory.

I think he thinks about the hidden dot dirs in home, those are for configuration settings

Yes, the dot-files should be installed in /home/* , but definitely not any binaries or libraries etc.


#binarii @ irc.binarii.net
Matrix Server: https://matrix.binarii.net
-------------
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#14 2011-07-02 12:20:53

Mr.Elendig
#archlinux@freenode channel op
From: The intertubes
Registered: 2004-11-07
Posts: 4,092

Re: Installing to home directory instead of root?

Maki wrote:

I have an 500 gb hard disk and of that 400 gb is my data partition (movies, music, apps windows games and pacman cache), 20 gb's for /root 20 for /home and the rest for toying with other OS'es. that way my data is safe.

seperate partion for /root is about as useless as it gets, specially 20gb, maybe you ment / instead?


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#15 2011-07-02 14:02:18

ANOKNUSA
Member
Registered: 2010-10-22
Posts: 2,141

Re: Installing to home directory instead of root?

@natpjohnson: If you're referring to hidden configuration files (such as .bashrc), then more info on what files you're actually "missing" would be helpful.  Check the wiki for whatever apps you happen to think should have such config or rc files in your Home folder.  By default, such diverse software as vim, MPD, the various window managers and X.org don't stick configuration files in /home; you need to copy over the example/skeleton file to the appropriate folder in /home and modify it to your liking.  Arch doesn't provide its own "default" to make things "easier" the way other distros do. 

As for your partition scheme: I'm not sure what you mean by it being useless.  My / partition is 7 gigs, and my whole system takes up only 4.3 gigs.  /home has about 680 gigs dedicated to it, and most of that is filled with music, movies/tv shows, comics, personal writing, custom scripts, icons and gtk themes and various crap I keep around "just in case."  The Home Folder is your personal folder, and the system isn't supposed to modify it except when specific software intentionally places a config file there.  The fact that you don't know this after (supposedly) using other distros before switching to Arch is worrisome; you might want to do a little reading this weekend.

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