/home on a thumb drive

[BobI]

I am currently using Hardy on my HP Pavilion zv5000 laptop. It is a standard installation from a DVD from Canonical. I think that it would be nice to have my home folder on a USB thumb drive. Could someone give me some pointers on advisability and method? TIA
Bob I

[lmilano]

Re: /home on a thumb drive

Hi

I wouldn't do that, the essential files in /home are needed for login, and if you don't have your pendrive on you are toast. Also, up until recently (and maybe this is still the case), removbable media was not mounted after hibernation or sleep mode (suspend) wake up, which is a disaster if that's where /home is.

What many people do (I do this in my eeepc) is to put data/media files in a pendrive, and access them as needed.

Makes sense?

Cheers!

[BobI]

Re: /home on a thumb drive

Thanks for the advice. I will take it. How about setting up a separate /home partition? I would like to have my /home data and information remain if I have to re-install. I ran into this problem recently when I "upgraded" to Intrepid. What a disaster! I came to hate KDE 4 and the crippled Konqueror that came with it. I finally decided to wipe it and start over, but had to manually save my Firefox and Thunderbird profiles and re-set them after the re-install. I would rather not have to do that again, if I could avoid it. I searched the data base, but couldn't find an answer. Could you direct me to the proper procedure?
Bob I

[dibl]

Re: /home on a thumb drive

@Bob it's fairly popular to set up /home on a separate partition, but I've found it has some residual disadvantages (all your desktop "settings" for every package you use go in there).

I use a separate partition for my data, but I don't mount it as /home, I mount it (actually them) as separate partitions, with names like Docs, Images, Music, Videos, etc. Then I symlink those partitions into my /home folder, so they appear to be there. The data is just as accessible as if it were really in /home, but the desktop settings stay with the OS where they belong.

Just a suggestion -- if you want more details/specifics, I'll be happy to provide.

[lmilano]

Re: /home on a thumb drive

Dibl has a good point, which is more relevant if you play with different flavors of linux. If you just plan to upgrade in the future, and/or keep your data safe in case things go south and you need to reformat the main partition, then /home in a separate is the way to go. In fact, this is what I've been doing the last 7 years, first from Mandrake, then Mandriva, and then switched to Kubuntu 6.10 I think, and upgraded all the way to here. A couple times I've seen a glitch or two, mostly if you want to downgrade, because the settings in /home are typically forward-compatible (they work in the next, but not in the previous version).

This guide is great.
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/separatehome

If you run into trouble, drop a line and we'll be there for you :-)

Please take your time to do it, you need lots of extra time so you don't need to rush it (if everything goes fine, 1 hours or less will do).

[lmilano]

Re: /home on a thumb drive

I forgot to mention: I prefer xfs (rather than ext3) for /home. It is much faster for large files, and I store everything in /home (movies, pictures, etc)

[BobI]

Re: /home on a thumb drive

Thanks all for the information. I read and printed out the reference you gave me and will study it before I do anything. I see one problem. I am using Kubuntu and the guide is Ubuntu specific. For example, I don't have GParted in my system as far as I can tell. (I'm still pretty much of a newbie.) I'm sure there is a Kubuntu equivalent, but don't know what it is. Actually, if I do this, I will probably resize the partition in XP using Partition Magic. I think that most of the rest of the information will work, except that I will have to use Kate instead of Gedit where called for, etc. This is a project for next week. Thanks again.
Bob I

[Snowhog]

Re: /home on a thumb drive

The .iso for the GParted LiveCD can be downloaded here. (version 0.3.9-4)

Use your favorite CD burner (k3B works well) to create the LiveCD from the downloaded .iso file.

[lmilano]

Re: /home on a thumb drive

For example, I don't have GParted in my system as far as I can tell. 

The LiveCD may have QtParted (the Kubuntu equivalent). But also, you can install software in the live CD (assuming you have a network connection running). I have done this a few times (install gparted in the live CD for "forensic" work). The "installation " goes into your RAM, so you can only instal relatively small packages.

[BobI]

Re: /home on a thumb drive

I have a current edition of Knoppix that has both Gparted and QTParted on it. I think that either one will do the job nicely. Thanks for all your help.
Bob I

[geezer]

Re: /home on a thumb drive

@Bob it's fairly popular to set up /home on a separate partition, but I've found it has some residual disadvantages (all your desktop "settings" for every package you use go in there).........................

dibl - I don't really follow you here. You mention disadvantages, but the one you mention I don't understand. Why that is a disadvantage?

I use /home on a separate partition and have since I had to re-create a lot of stuff after an unplanned re-installation and so want to be sure that I'm well aware of any disadvantages.

[dibl]

Re: /home on a thumb drive

OK, I'll attempt an explanation.

Open Konqueror or Dolphin, and assuming it opens to your /home/user folder, click "View > Show Hidden Files". Now look at all those folders that start with a period, such as (in my user folder) .audacity, .emerald, .fontconfig, .gimp-2.4, .gkrellm2, .kde, .local, .mozilla, .mplayer, .openoffice.org2, .vmware, .xine, and many others. Depending on how you have tweaked your desktop and configuration settings for those packages, each of those have custom settings indicated.

Worst case, the "other" or "new" OS that you decide to plunk onto your system is going to have to contend with whatever is in those hidden settings. What if you've decided to install Ubuntu and the Gnome desktop, and now the Gnome window decorator is fighting with whatever is in .emerald from your prior installation? What if you want to "go back" to an earlier KDE, and it doesn't read the .kde folder settings because they haven't been invented yet (for that version)? What if you want the GoogleEarth icon on your Gnome desktop, but on the panel in KDE? You'll either have to compromise, or else change it at every login to the "other" desktop. You didn't install custom fonts, or want them, but your OOO docs mysteriously appear with unexpected default fonts. All kinds of undesirable results may come from the new OS and packages reading all those configuration settings and attempting to handle them.

So, I'm saying life has enough complexities without dealing with unwanted surprises that are so easily avoidable. I just leave /home in the same partition as the rest of the Linux filesystem, and then I symlink my Docs, Images, Music, Videos, Backups, and Downloads into the /home folder there, and my data stays free of settings, and my settings stay free of data that way.

[BobI]

Re: /home on a thumb drive

Dibl,
Hmmm. You make good points. Could you humor a newbie and outline how you do those symlinks?
Bob I

[dibl]

Re: /home on a thumb drive

OK, no problemo.

Let's say you have a drive /dev/sdc1, and on that drive which is mounted as /media/data, you have made folders for Docs, Images, and Music.

So, (this is crazy-easy) -- you log in to your Kubuntu system and you open Konqueror or Dolphin, which will open to your desktop. You size the window so it is no more than half your screen, and you put it on the left half of your screen, and you browse to the /media/data drive, so you are looking at your data folders.

Now, open another instance of Konqueror or Dolphin, which will open to your desktop. Put this one on the right half of your screen. Now take your mouse and grab a folder from the left window, say "Docs", and drag it into the right window of Konqueror. When you let go, it will pop up a menu that gives you choices of "move", "copy", and "link here", and you want to choose "link here". It will put a folder icon with the same name, and a little curved arrow which is the indicator that it is a symlink, not a real folder.

That's it -- you're done.

[Qqmike]

Re: /home on a thumb drive

Yeah, nice show, dibl. Along with BobI, I was curious about this too, about how you did this. Good idea wrt the settings vs the personal data. Thanks.