Arch Linux

blampars

Member

From: Detroit

Registered: 2009-01-05

Posts: 36

move home directory to seperate existing partition

A fairly straight forward question I suppose.  Sorry if this gets to be a long read, just want to be clear on what I've done and where I want to go.. Here's what I have in mind though..

I originally installed arch on a seperate partition.  Since I was just going to "check it out" I didn't bother creating seperate home partition or anything.  Everything resides on one partition.  Originally I thought that if I liked Arch, I would just reformat the drive and reinstall.  However, I got so sucked in making it everything I wanted it to be (and not be) that I don't want to lose what I've done with my OS.  Backing up is not an option, as I don't have an external drive.

I'm currently running a triple boot system - XP, Ubuntu 8.10, and now Arch.  My ubuntu is split into a / partition and a /home partition.  What I'd like to do is delete everything off the /home partition except my pictures, documents, music..  The config/settings files can all go.  I wanna move my arch /home folder to that partition.  How do I go about that?

I'm not worried about the root ubuntu partition, that will be formated and will become my "install random OS to play with here.." partition

Thanks for your time,
-B

Last edited by blampars (2009-01-14 02:38:47)

Wintervenom

Member

Registered: 2008-08-20

Posts: 1,011

Re: move home directory to seperate existing partition

mkdir old_settings
mv $HOME/.* old_settings  #Won't move "." and ".."
rm -rf old_settings

mount $ARCH_PARTITION /mnt
cp -axu /mnt/$ARCH_HOME/* $HOME
umount /mnt

Last edited by Wintervenom (2009-01-14 02:50:49)

fukawi2

Ex-Administratorino

From: .vic.au

Registered: 2007-09-28

Posts: 6,223

Website

Re: move home directory to seperate existing partition

I would do...
1) Rename your home folder on the Ubuntu home partition
2) Mount the Ubuntu home partition to /mnt in Arch
3) Move your current home directory to /mnt/<USERNAME>
4) Manually merge your pictures, documents, music etc from the old directory (Ubuntu's home) to the new home. Once you've got everything you want out of the old directory, you can wipe it.
5) Delete everything from the Arch's home directory (it's all in the separate partition now) and then re-mount the separate partition to /home

Hope that makes sense...?

EDIT: Yeah, something like wintervenom

Last edited by fukawi2 (2009-01-14 02:50:25)

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blampars

Member

From: Detroit

Registered: 2009-01-05

Posts: 36

Re: move home directory to seperate existing partition

great, thank you both for the help!