home diectory size

[emer_son]

Hello
What is the size of the home directory in Kubuntu 8.04. I frequently get warnings I'm running our of space. Can it be enlarged?

Thanks

[dibl]

Re: home diectory size

There is no default size of /home, separate from the rest of the partition that the OS was installed on. In other words, whatever part of the partition that you installed Kubuntu on, that is not consumed by the OS, is available for /home. AFAIK, something in the range of 4.5GB is about the minimum to run the system on, without getting those "out of space" errors.

To deal with the concern of "growth", one popular method is to install /home on a separate large partition:

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/separatehome

However, I personally just make a larger partition for the OS in the first place (15GB - 20GB), and then I keep my large "globs" of data (music, images, videos) on their own partitions, and symlink them in to the Kubuntu /home directory. This way, it doesn't matter what happens to the OS, and it doesn't matter if I choose to use multiple OSs, the data just sits there and is not touched by the other stuff that goes on with the computer.

[Snowhog]

Re: home diectory size

Can it be enlarged?

Simple answer: Yes. Caveat: You have to have available unused space 'at the end' of your current /home partition to expand into, or, you have to create a larger partition and 'move' the current /home partition into it. That latter takes some thought and planning, but it can be done. Adjustments to your /etc/fstab are required afterwards if moving a partition.

The link dibl provided is a good one.

[13thSlayer]

Re: home diectory size

/home is a PARTITION? I thought it's a directory... so it's limited in space?

[Snowhog]

Re: home diectory size

Well, yes, /home is a directory. But, if it's installed on its own partition, one tends to refer to it as home partition rather than home directory. Now, if one mounts /home within the root partition, then it truely is a directory.

Convential wisdom is to utilize a separate partition for ones home directory, rather than installing it 'as a sub-directory' under roots partition.

[Ole Juul]

Re: home diectory size

When I recently installed Kubuntu 9.04 on a 500GB drive, I noticed that the so called guided partitioning divided the drive into two parts. Half for / and the other half for /home. I wonder what the point of that scheme is? It doesn't make any sense to me, so I made the / partition about 20MB and the rest for /home.

I have two related questions:

1/ I have a machine with a small drive and hence a small /home partition. I plan to add a large drive for /home later. My plan was to just use cfdisk and mount it as /home. Will that work OK and just extend the file system?

2/ Regarding what dibl said about using symlink, why would you do that, how does that work, and how do you do it?

[13thSlayer]

Re: home diectory size

When I recently installed Kubuntu 9.04 on a 500GB drive, I noticed that the so called guided partitioning divided the drive into two parts. Half for / and the other half for /home. I wonder what the point of that scheme is? It doesn't make any sense to me, so I made the / partition about 20MB and the rest for /home.

I have two related questions:

1/ I have a machine with a small drive and hence a small /home partition. I plan to add a large drive for /home later. My plan was to just use cfdisk and mount it as /home. Will that work OK and just extend the file system?

2/ Regarding what dibl said about using symlink, why would you do that, how does that work, and how do you do it?

You need a bigger /. You will have to install soft somewhere and it's not gonna be /home, belive me.

[Ole Juul]

Re: home diectory size

You need a bigger /. You will have to install soft somewhere and it's not gonna be /home, belive me.

We'll I do have a hard time believing you. I just did a df on that machine and I had actually made it 23GB. The machine is a real workhorse and there is a LOT of software installed. At this point the root partition has 3.5GB (17%) usage. I would think that this is fairly representative of average desktop usage. As mentioned above, it's a full GUI using current Kubuntu.

BTW: I have a non GUI Linux box which also has a lot of software on it and the 5.5GB root partition has 16% usage. Also, my own main machine runs Kubuntu 8.04 and has even more programs installed - root is 10GB with 39% usage.

[13thSlayer]

Re: home diectory size

You need a bigger /. You will have to install soft somewhere and it's not gonna be /home, belive me.

We'll I do have a hard time believing you. I just did a df on that machine and I had actually made it 23GB. The machine is a real workhorse and there is a LOT of software installed. At this point the root partition has 3.5GB (17%) usage. I would think that this is fairly representative of average desktop usage. As mentioned above, it's a full GUI using current Kubuntu.

BTW: I have a non GUI Linux box which also has a lot of software on it and the 5.5GB root partition has 16% usage. Also, my own main machine runs Kubuntu 8.04 and has even more programs installed - root is 10GB with 39% usage.

Software installs to /usr/bin AFAIK. What if you'll want to install something else then what you currently have, say, you'd want to try GNOME?

[Snowhog]

Re: home diectory size

I just did a df on that machine and I had actually made it 23GB.

That's more than enough for your root partition. Mine are 8GB each, with /home partitions of 20GB, and running a KDE 4.3.1 desktop (in my sidux install). My current stats for those partitions are:

Filesystem  Type  Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2   ext3  7.9G 3.2G 4.4G 42% /
/dev/sda5   ext3   20G 7.5G  12G 40% /media/disk1part5

Even at just 8GB for root, I'm at less than 50% used. If one keeps a clean system - deleting downloaded packages from /var/cache/apt/archives/ and /var/cache/apt/archives/partial/ (apt-get clean && apt-get autoclean) - as I do, then you are not likely to run out of space. As to the root partition, one also should be monitoring the created log files. These can, over time, become fairly large.

[dibl]

Re: home diectory size

I have two related questions:

1/ I have a machine with a small drive and hence a small /home partition. I plan to add a large drive for /home later. My plan was to just use cfdisk and mount it as /home. Will that work OK and just extend the file system?

Actually, if you use your new big drive just for data, then you can symlink your data into the /home that you have on the small drive (see #2 below) and there's no need for cfdisk or anything else.

So, you will connect your new drive, format it ext3 or ext4, then set up the mount point and mount it in /etc/fstab, so it will be automatically mounted when you boot. Then, you can make some data directories: "MUSIC", "VIDEOS", "DOWNLOADS", "DOCS", "PIX", or whatever you need. Copy your data into those folders.

2/ Regarding what dibl said about using symlink, why would you do that, how does that work, and how do you do it?

OK, now all you need to do is make symlinks in /home to your data folders "MUSIC", "VIDEOS", etc. I do it with Dolphin -- you could use Konqueror or the command line. In Dolphin, you split the window and leave one on your user's home folder, and in the other one you browse to the other drive, which may appear in /mnt or /media, wherever you mounted it. When you are looking at the folders that you made for your data, you simply drag them across to the other window, and drop it, and click "link here", and it will be linked in.

Now, for practical purposes, your data are available in your /home folder, but they actually live over on the larger hard drive. So your Kubuntu installation won't "grow" as you save more data.