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Tharbad

Member

Registered: 2016-02-27

Posts: 333

[SOLVED] Splitting my home dir over 2 drives

Hi everyone,

Last black Friday I maxed my budget and bought a 2TB NVMe.
I would like to move to it some parts of my home folder, except for: My steam folder, wineprefixes and several other folders I created.
I know that moving the folders I created will be OK. But how about steam and the prefixes (some created with playonlinux and some with lutris)?
Any chance those links might be overwritten by an update?

Thanks

Last edited by Tharbad (2021-04-19 23:46:41)

kermit63

Member

Registered: 2018-07-04

Posts: 372

Re: [SOLVED] Splitting my home dir over 2 drives

I don't use steam all that much except playing civ V infrequently. My steam folder is symlinked to another folder in another drive past 5 years and so far it seems to be working ok.

Similarly, I don't use playonlinux nor lutris, just plain wine. Again, wine prefixes symlinked to another drive seems to be ok.

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seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 77,523

Re: [SOLVED] Splitting my home dir over 2 drives

You $HOME should never be touched by pacman updates, what the programs do (at any time) is a different matter.
But you could use bind mounts instead.

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Tharbad

Member

Registered: 2016-02-27

Posts: 333

Re: [SOLVED] Splitting my home dir over 2 drives

Bind mount? Why? Why not a normal mount?

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 77,523

Re: [SOLVED] Splitting my home dir over 2 drives

Because you want to keep several distinct subdirectories on a different partition - how do you plan to "normal mount" them into your $HOME?

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Tharbad

Member

Registered: 2016-02-27

Posts: 333

Re: [SOLVED] Splitting my home dir over 2 drives

Symlink or mount on a dir in fstab?

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 77,523

Re: [SOLVED] Splitting my home dir over 2 drives

The symlink solution is what worried you in the OP, wasn't?
"A" dir doesn't solve "multiple" dirs, does it?

No offense, but you know what bind mounts are, do you?
And the plan is to have your $HOME on /dev/nvmeXpY, but keep some stuff on /dev/sdaX, is it?
So you would want to mount /dev/nvmeXpY to /home/tharbad, /dev/sdaX to /mnt/sdaX and have some /mnt/sdaX/.steam, /mnt/sdaX/.lutris appear in /home/tharbad/.steam and /home/tharbad/.lutris, do you?
But you're not sure about symlinking them, are you?

In that case, use bind mounts.

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Tharbad

Member

Registered: 2016-02-27

Posts: 333

Re: [SOLVED] Splitting my home dir over 2 drives

Thanks.
I've read some about bind mount. Correct me if I'm wrong: On the nvme I'll see it as if it was a normal folder tree but the files will be stored on the slow hdd? And so does linux? So from the OS POV it's just a normal folder tree?

Last edited by Tharbad (2021-04-19 21:43:48)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 77,523

Re: [SOLVED] Splitting my home dir over 2 drives

Yup. That's the nice thing about bind mounts. That's why I suggested them ;-)

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How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

Tharbad

Member

Registered: 2016-02-27

Posts: 333

Re: [SOLVED] Splitting my home dir over 2 drives

Thanks!