Arch Linux

Evelarch

Member

Registered: 2023-12-22

Posts: 7

[SOLVED] Merging Arch root and Home directory without dataloss

Hey i recently switched to Arch from windows (and i love it), on thing is holding me back tho, as recomended i made a seperate partition for my root and its pretty much constantly full.
I have used a symbolic link to move all of my flatpaks from root to home as well but really want to get some more programms on my system (since its my only computer rn) but cant in some cases.

I also REALLY dont want to kill everything in my Home partition or take to the risk of having to redo the install process.
Im aware that there is a way to shrink the Home partition and increase to root partition but that would same as the flatpak lib move only be a temporary bandaid if i understood that right.
Pls help me!

I hope i didnt miss something in the wiki about this merging without dataloss.

https://imgur.com/bNn9oZm

Last edited by Evelarch (2024-01-14 13:11:03)

xerxes_

Member

Registered: 2018-04-29

Posts: 800

Re: [SOLVED] Merging Arch root and Home directory without dataloss

No one said it is impossible to change size of partitions, but it depends from configuration how complicated process it is. Post output of commands:

df -h
lsblk
lsblk -f

Do you use lvm, disk/partition(s) encryption?

Last edited by xerxes_ (2024-01-11 18:18:36)

teckk

Member

Registered: 2013-02-21

Posts: 524

Re: [SOLVED] Merging Arch root and Home directory without dataloss

Count it as a learning experience. Wont be the last one. You can install linux on one partiton. Everything under / Then you don't have to worry about / getting full, or how much size to allocate to it.

That's not counting an EFI partition, a small boot partition for grub on BIOS/gpt, or a swap partition if you want one.

Then you can use the machine until the drive is full.
If you start moving the partition start location, you will probably have a broken machine.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Boot_loader
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Partitioning

Study the installation guide for while. Once you get to understand it, you can install arch in 20 min while watching TV.

Evelarch

Member

Registered: 2023-12-22

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED] Merging Arch root and Home directory without dataloss

No one said it is impossible to change size of partitions, but it depends from configuration how complicated process it is. Post output of commands:

df -h
lsblk
lsblk -f

Do you use lvm, disk/partition(s) encryption?

i have not opted for disk encryption
https://imgur.com/Q6BD5vu

d.ALT

Member

Registered: 2019-05-10

Posts: 943

Re: [SOLVED] Merging Arch root and Home directory without dataloss

Please post the outputs embedded in [ code ][ /code ] tags, instead of uploading screenshots.

You still have 59GiB of free space left on your nvme0n1p3: boot a Live Linux, rsync the contents from nvme0n1p2 to nvme0n1p3, adjust fstab and BootLoader, delete nvme0n1p2, grow nvme0n1p3 and reboot.
ALWAYS BACKUP YOUR DATA when performing operations at partitions level!!

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<49,17,III,I>    Fama di loro il mondo esser non lassa;
<50,17,III,I>    misericordia e giustizia li sdegna:
<51,17,III,I>    non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa.

xerxes_

Member

Registered: 2018-04-29

Posts: 800

Re: [SOLVED] Merging Arch root and Home directory without dataloss

If you make grow partition remember to first change partition size to bigger and next filesystem size, so filesystem fits in partition. When you would shrink partition then it is the opposite: shrink filesystem and then partition.

Last edited by xerxes_ (2024-01-11 23:08:18)

Evelarch

Member

Registered: 2023-12-22

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED] Merging Arch root and Home directory without dataloss

as teckk recommended i did reinstall the Arch entirely

Last edited by Evelarch (2024-01-14 13:11:17)

d.ALT

Member

Registered: 2019-05-10

Posts: 943

Re: [SOLVED] Merging Arch root and Home directory without dataloss

as teckk recommended i did reinstall the Arch entirely

;mod note mark the thread as Solved

YOU mark it: just edit the title of your first post.

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<49,17,III,I>    Fama di loro il mondo esser non lassa;
<50,17,III,I>    misericordia e giustizia li sdegna:
<51,17,III,I>    non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa.

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: The Wirral

Registered: 2014-02-20

Posts: 8,327

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Merging Arch root and Home directory without dataloss

Apologies for the off-topic diversion but:

as recomended i made a seperate partition for my root

Where exactly is this recommended?

The official installation guide links to the partitioning page which says

Single root partition

This scheme is the simplest, most flexible and should be enough for most use cases given the increase in storage size of consumer grade devices. A swap file can be created and easily resized as needed. It usually makes sense to start by considering a single / partition and then separate out others based on specific use cases like RAID, encryption, a shared media partition, etc…

So the official recommendation seems to be to use a single partition for the entire root filesystem (including /home/) unless you have a specific reason to do otherwise.

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2024-01-14 10:14:04)

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Para todos todo, para nosotros nada

Devirdaim

Member

Registered: 2024-11-22

Posts: 1

Re: [SOLVED] Merging Arch root and Home directory without dataloss

Apologies for the off-topic diversion but:

as recomended i made a seperate partition for my root

Where exactly is this recommended?

The official installation guide links to the partitioning page which says

Single root partition

This scheme is the simplest, most flexible and should be enough for most use cases given the increase in storage size of consumer grade devices. A swap file can be created and easily resized as needed. It usually makes sense to start by considering a single / partition and then separate out others based on specific use cases like RAID, encryption, a shared media partition, etc…

So the official recommendation seems to be to use a single partition for the entire root filesystem (including /home/) unless you have a specific reason to do otherwise.

Its bc the archinstall script reccomends it for some reason (i fell for the same trap)