Prior to installing Archlinux, should one seperate "/home" and "/"?

smitty · 2008-02-07 01:34:56

On some tutorials, I read it is good to seperate "/home" and "/" directories as seperate paritions. Some schools said that this would increase performance. However everytime I have done this, "/" would get filled up and you can't install any more packages on the root directory. I noticed this when I recently tried "Mandrive 2008 Free DVD", with their "Auto-Prepare" or "Auto-Format" (I forgot their name for it) feature. I figured they knew what they were doing by this. It create these two partitions, but after installing a decent mount of programs, using their package manager, it filled up the "/" directory and I couldn't install any more programs on the DVD. So, my question is, has anyone experience having one partition as "/" and one as "/home", successfully? Also, experiencing this without the mention of the problems above (i.e., no more space on root directory)? Is so, how did you effectively manage it? In short, I would use this method if it didn't affect how much space allocated on the root directory. "/home" is also a directory that gets filled often on my drive, as well.

P.S. Perhaps, would it me my methodology?

dyscoria · 2008-02-07 01:41:21

smitty wrote:

Some schools said that this would increase performance.

I don't think it's generally for increase in performance. Usually it's just an easy way to share files between Linux partitions (if you have a dual boot setup for example) and/or for easy reinstalls of linux without losing all your documents & music etc. It makes for easier maintenance.

How large is your hard drive? If it's not very big, then it might not be worth having separate partitions.

smitty · 2008-02-07 01:50:14

My hard drive is 300GB SATA (well 290GB, according to "df -h")

Misfit138 · 2008-02-07 01:50:25

To answer your question, it is not done prior to installation, but rather, during installation, if desired. The Arch installer will allow you to partition your HD any which way you choose.
If choosing a separate / and /home, just be sure to make / large enough so that it will not get filled up.

dr_te_z · 2008-02-07 06:39:01

smitty wrote:

Some schools said that this would increase performance.

On the same volume? No. When you have move than 1 physical disk: yes.
It is very usefull when you anticipate on distro-hopping/dual-triple boot or re-installing. In that case do not mount as "/home" but make a separate data partition and mount this as "/home/smitty/data". In that case your "/home/smitty" is unique per linux-instance. Sharing a complete "/home" across linuxes in a bad idea: you do not want the gnome installed on arch interpred the ".dirs" created by gnome installed on debian, now will you?
Choose you file-system for your data partition as agile as possile so that all O.S.'-es can read/write on it (it hurts me to say that fat32 is most suitble). It can also be shared with windows and various BSD tasts.

alex_anthony · 2008-02-07 18:25:26

If / is filling up too fast, it could be your /tmp. You can put this on your /home partition and then put a link in.

dyscoria · 2008-02-07 18:47:28

In your situation, there doesn't seem to be a need to have those separate partitions so perhaps just having one / partition for the whole drive should be fine.

Having a separate /home partition might help in the future though. As dr_te_z mentioned, instead of having a /home partition, it's sometimes better to have an extra partition that isn't named /home for other files such as music, videos and documents. I have a separate /data partition and just shove all my documents and files there. Makes for easy maintenance. If you want to do it this way, have a 20GB / partition and the rest /data (or whatever you want to call it) partition. You said / partition is getting full at the moment...how big is it?

Having a separate /var partition can help too, as log files and things can accumulate. If you have the 'crond' DAEMON running in /etc/rc.conf and logrotate functioning, this shouldn't be a problem so I wouldn't worry about that too much. Run 'pacman -Scc' every once in a while to clear the pacman cache (which if I remember correctly is stored somewhere in the /var directory). If you want to try out a separate /var partition too, I think around 10GB should be good. It also has the added benefit of preventing log files from filling up your / partition and rendering it inoperable.

Last edited by dyscoria (2008-02-07 18:48:02)

jacko · 2008-02-07 19:22:04

My hard drive is 300GB SATA (well 290GB, according to "df -h")

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ext … stem_Space

Zer0 · 2008-02-07 23:26:14

I think most Arch users use seperate / and /home partitions (if not more). It's just good practice too keep your data on a separate partition from the system to ease backups etc..

Depending on how much software you use I guess / will fill up. 10 GB for root is plenty and maybe even overkill. Most of the users who have talked about this in the past have agreed between 4-7 GB for root is good. Considering you have 300 GB of space.. I say you can't go wrong with 10 GB for root and the rest for home.

Right now I have 3.75 GB used of my 10 GB, there is 609 packages installed on my system (running KDEmod) and I have never ever used more then 10 GB. Maybe you would go bigger then 10GB if you plan on installing more then one DE at a time (eg. KDE, Gnome, XFCE).

thayer · 2008-02-08 01:24:05

That's what I love about Linux... ask one question and get 8 different answers. Allow me to be #9:

I used to mount /home to a separate partition, but not any more. Like some have pointed out already, it won't increase your performance if it's on the same physical hard drive (and might not even if it isn't). It really doesn't aid in backups either. The only real benefit is for sharing it across separate distributions, but if you plan to use only one distribution (e.g. Arch) then it's a moot point. Another possible benefit is that if you hose your system and have to reinstall Arch, you won't have to copy your /home from a backup.

In reality though, when I do a clean install I hate the thought of having a year's worth of misc junk sitting around in my /home dir (old dotfiles, prefs from uninstalled programs, etc.), so I usually use that time to selectively copy only certain files from my backup. I do however mount /boot to it's own 128MB partition, using the non-journaled Ext2 filesystem. I've read that this can help in times of need, but again this belief may be unwarranted.

If I may make one recommendation, it would be to not only backup your /home regularly, but also the /etc directory which holds an enormous amount of configuration files specific to your computer. Having a backup of that will definitely come in handy during a reinstallation.

schivmeister · 2008-02-08 01:55:36

i'll say it again: good practice

moljac024 · 2008-02-08 04:10:29

I mount separate /boot /var /tmp /home and /data partitions

broch · 2008-02-09 01:40:50

lets say that you borked your arch install
if you have
/
/home

format / install Arch
mount /home
restart Arch
that is all your dosc, configs, music is there

single partition
use backup (if you have it)

backup is important irrelevant of partition design, but (unless disk fails) you may not need to use it at all if you have separate /home

separate /home is simply more convenient.

Last edited by broch (2008-02-09 01:41:50)

Bonzodog · 2008-02-14 21:33:30

I have always had a separate / and /home. My drive is 160GB, and I have 20GB for / and the rest for /home (apart from 500MB for a swap).
I have found it helps to be able to do clean installs with other distros, and preserve all your data on the /home. When you clean install the new distro, or re-install, you just get it to chown your /home/username dir.

Last edited by Bonzodog (2008-02-14 21:34:16)

dyscoria · 2008-02-14 22:13:21

For me, a separate /home is limiting in 2 ways:

1) Configuration files can conflict across two or more partitions of different distributions.
2) Configuration files can conflict across two or more partitions of the same distribution, with different desktop environments/window managers.

I have two partitions currently, my main one has Openbox and the other has KDEmod. My /home pretty much contains nothing but configuration files, so a backup requires me to tar it and that's it. It's currently 11MB big All my documents/music/videos are on a /data partition. This I shove on an external USB hard drive as backup (with my music on an ipod aswell).

I like this way as I can have both of the Arch partitions completely separate and independent. There can be no config file problems. A clean install without losing configuration is as simple as tar-ing (if that's a word) the 11MB of files and shoving it on a USB. If you're really minimal, it might even fit on a floppy drive not that I even know what a floppy drive looks like anymore...

Agent69 · 2008-02-15 12:53:17

In my opinion, separate partitions is just the Unix way of doing things. I have a suspicion (based on pure conjecture and based on no facts at all) that most people who prefer one big partition for everything are generally former Mac or Windows users, where that is the norm.

jacko · 2008-02-15 13:27:34

Agent69 wrote:

In my opinion, separate partitions is just the Unix way of doing things. I have a suspicion (based on pure conjecture and based on no facts at all) that most people who prefer one big partition for everything are generally former Mac or Windows users, where that is the norm.

I am a former windows user and as of right now I have one large partition. But, when I first switched to linux I gave the separate idea a try and for my needs it was absolutely useless. I ran out of space on my root partition as well when I had them separated and it was a nightmare getting my pc back to a workable state.

for me my root partition is larger then my home directory, which most people will tell u it should be the other way around. So you can take all this advice with a grain of salt, until u try it u won't know what is best for you.

SiC · 2008-02-28 08:58:51

Couple of things to note, your / partition will grow significantly over the first few weeks of you using the distribution. However once you have all the applications you want installed, then that partition will remain fairly constant in terms of disk usage.

I currently have my / partition on both machines set to 10GB. I have 256MB for /boot, 4GB for /opt and 4GB swap. /var is also 4GB. The /home folder takes the remaining XXGB aside from the windows partitions. There are a number of reasons why I do this; primarily because it is good practice to separate your data and applications. Also having fixed partition sizes solves another problem. It prevents your system from becoming overloaded with crap old applications that you never use. For instance, my /opt is 4GB. That means that stuff like KDE, OO etc cannot just fill the system up with shite. Being honest I'd prefer a lot more applications to install to /opt than currently do. Ah well. Also keeping /var to a fixed size means that you prevent enormous log files appearing and endless temporary files being produced. The fact the pacman cache is there also means that don't run the risk of having thousands of pkg files left lying around. Unless you want to of course.

As has been said it is far better to structure your system in a logical manner than to simply let it just be a huge conglomerated mess.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-02-07 01:34:56

Prior to installing Archlinux, should one seperate "/home" and "/"?

#2 2008-02-07 01:41:21

Re: Prior to installing Archlinux, should one seperate "/home" and "/"?

#3 2008-02-07 01:50:14

Re: Prior to installing Archlinux, should one seperate "/home" and "/"?

#4 2008-02-07 01:50:25

Re: Prior to installing Archlinux, should one seperate "/home" and "/"?

#5 2008-02-07 06:39:01

Re: Prior to installing Archlinux, should one seperate "/home" and "/"?

#6 2008-02-07 18:25:26

Re: Prior to installing Archlinux, should one seperate "/home" and "/"?

#7 2008-02-07 18:47:28

Re: Prior to installing Archlinux, should one seperate "/home" and "/"?

#8 2008-02-07 19:22:04

Re: Prior to installing Archlinux, should one seperate "/home" and "/"?

#9 2008-02-07 23:26:14

Re: Prior to installing Archlinux, should one seperate "/home" and "/"?

#10 2008-02-08 01:24:05

Re: Prior to installing Archlinux, should one seperate "/home" and "/"?

#11 2008-02-08 01:55:36

Re: Prior to installing Archlinux, should one seperate "/home" and "/"?

#12 2008-02-08 04:10:29

Re: Prior to installing Archlinux, should one seperate "/home" and "/"?

#13 2008-02-09 01:40:50

Re: Prior to installing Archlinux, should one seperate "/home" and "/"?

#14 2008-02-14 21:33:30

Re: Prior to installing Archlinux, should one seperate "/home" and "/"?

#15 2008-02-14 22:13:21

Re: Prior to installing Archlinux, should one seperate "/home" and "/"?

#16 2008-02-15 12:53:17

Re: Prior to installing Archlinux, should one seperate "/home" and "/"?

#17 2008-02-15 13:27:34

Re: Prior to installing Archlinux, should one seperate "/home" and "/"?

#18 2008-02-28 08:58:51

Re: Prior to installing Archlinux, should one seperate "/home" and "/"?

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