Arch Linux

TWILisawesome

Member

Registered: 2010-12-28

Posts: 22

Separate home partition

Hi, I would like my /home directory on a seperate partition.  It is going to be shared with Ubuntu 10.10.  I already have it set up in Ubuntu 10.10, but now I need to set it up in Arch Linux.  Since all my home contents are already on the new /home partition, I just need to tell Arch Linux to mount that partition automatically. 

How can I do just that?

Im assuming I would generally follow this: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Parti … ome/Moving  except for any steps that invlove copying home directories.  Is this right?

I just want to make sure, just so I don't screw things up.

kaszak696

Member

Registered: 2009-05-26

Posts: 543

Re: Separate home partition

Adjust your /etc/fstab. For example, my /home mounting entry looks like this:

UUID=209e09c5-c678-4b32-abe8-8142f9cd50ba /home ext4 defaults 0 1

Instead of UUID you can also use /dev/sdXY, you can find UUIDs to your partitions in /dev/disk/by-uuid/ or by '$ blkid' command. Also, look here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fstab .

TBH you can also copy your home mounting entry from /etc/fstab in your Ubuntu, should work, i guess.

Last edited by kaszak696 (2011-01-17 21:26:38)

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SS4

Member

From: !Rochford, Essex

Registered: 2010-12-05

Posts: 699

Re: Separate home partition

You can add the UUID to /etc/fstab

It might be wise to pick separate usernames for your users though since otherwise you could get conflicts within your dotfiles

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Coacher

Guest

Re: Separate home partition

One more thing to mention is take care of permissions for your home directory and UIDs. So, both Ubuntu and Arch could live together and both use the same home dir. Make sure your arch and ubuntu user's UIDs and GIDs are the same. The easiest way to obtain ids is cat /etc/passwd | grep YourUserName.

Last edited by Coacher (2011-01-17 21:34:58)

TWILisawesome

Member

Registered: 2010-12-28

Posts: 22

Re: Separate home partition

Thanks for the quick response guys!  I did what you guys suggested and everything worked fine!

TWILisawesome

Member

Registered: 2010-12-28

Posts: 22

Re: Separate home partition

Update:

I issued the cat command in both OS's and they report almost the same message.  In Ubuntu:

 james:x:1000:1000:/home/james:/bin/bash

In Arch:

 james:x:1000:100:/home/james:/bin/bash

There is one less zero in the arch command.  Could this be a concern?

skunktrader

Member

From: Brisbane, Australia

Registered: 2010-02-14

Posts: 1,543

Re: Separate home partition

Update:

I issued the cat command in both OS's and they report almost the same message.  In Ubuntu:

 james:x:1000:1000:/home/james:/bin/bash

In Arch:

 james:x:1000:100:/home/james:/bin/bash

There is one less zero in the arch command.  Could this be a concern?

Yes

In ubuntu your primary group is james
In arch your primary group is users

Coacher

Guest

Re: Separate home partition

Update:

I issued the cat command in both OS's and they report almost the same message.  In Ubuntu:

 james:x:1000:1000:/home/james:/bin/bash

In Arch:

 james:x:1000:100:/home/james:/bin/bash

There is one less zero in the arch command.  Could this be a concern?

Any file you create will have its group the same as default group of your user. So, in order to make them similar just change one of these users default group. See man useradd about -g parameter.

TWILisawesome

Member

Registered: 2010-12-28

Posts: 22

Re: Separate home partition

In ubuntu your primary group is james
In arch your primary group is users

Can you give me any hints as to changing my primary group?

cesura

Package Maintainer (PM)

From: Tallinn, Estonia

Registered: 2010-01-23

Posts: 1,867

Re: Separate home partition

In ubuntu your primary group is james
In arch your primary group is users

Can you give me any hints as to changing my primary group?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=change+primary+user+group+linux

Last edited by cesura (2011-01-18 01:33:23)

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TWILisawesome

Member

Registered: 2010-12-28

Posts: 22

Re: Separate home partition

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=change+primary+user+group+linux

Now I feel like an a**hole

(I probably am one)

Thanks anyway, everything checks out now.