Mounting The Home Directory to a Separate Hard Drive

[robertdaleweir]

I would like to mount my /home directory on a second Hard Drive (separate spindle). Installed F8 recently and want all my user information on a completely separate drive. I saw one thread on mounting home on a separate partition but was unable understand the exact process, hence unable to get it to work for me.
My current fdisk -l is --->
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000ca1ce

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 25 200781 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 26 9729 77947380 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/sdb: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0002e262

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 30402 244198583+ 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/dm-0: 77.6 GB, 77678510080 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9443 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/dm-1: 2080 MB, 2080374784 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 252 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x30307800

Disk /dev/dm-1 doesn't contain a valid partition table
<---

and my /etc/fstab is --->

[root@red bin]# cat /etc/fstab
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap swap defaults 0 0

The /dev/sdb is where I want to mount home. Thanks in advance...

[sidebrnz]

OK, here's what I'd do: first, I'd partition and format that new hard disk and give it a label such as HOME, to make it obvious what it's for. (Pretty much all of this probably has to be done as root.) Then, I'd create a temporary mountpoint and mount it:

mkdir /mnt/home
mount DISKNAME /mnt/home

Then, copy all of /home over with this:

cp -pR /home /mnt/home

Next, of course, is to modify fstab by adding this line:

/HOME ext3 /home defaults 0,0

You can then test this by running

mount -a

to remount everything in fstab. If something doesn't work, you can always restore the backup of fwstab (fstab~) and back out of this. I'm doing this mostly from memory on a Windows box, so I may have missed something, but I think I've got the basics of it right. Good luck!

[lazlow]

I think the ext3 has to be after /home, but other than that it looks pretty good.

/HOME /home ext3 defaults 0,0


Edit: After you make sure it works, you may want to unmount it and remove anything in /home (not /HOME) to regain any lost space on the root drive.

[forkbomb]

Originally Posted by lazlow

I think the ext3 has to be after /home, but other than that it looks pretty good.

/HOME /home ext3 defaults 0,0


Edit: After you make sure it works, you may want to unmount it and remove anything in /home (not /HOME) to regain any lost space on the root drive.

Shouldn't it be LABEL=/HOME?

[sidebrnz]

Yeah; just do it the same way as / is mounted and it should work. The nice thing is that if it doesn't, your current /home is still there, which is why I recommended cp instead of mv.

[forkbomb]

Don't mean to hijack, but... in a semi-related question, what file systems can you use for a /home directory?

ext2
ext3
reiserfs
reiser4
xfs

Right? Wrong? Any others?

[sidebrnz]

You can use any filesystem your little heart desires. Personally, I use ext3 for everything, by YMMV.

[forkbomb]

Originally Posted by sidebrnz

You can use any filesystem your little heart desires. Personally, I use ext3 for everything, by YMMV.

Hmm. Not so sure about that. I asked awhile back about using FAT32 for a /home and a bunch of people said it's not possible.

No idea, though. I've never tried it.

[amanadas]

If you want to use LABEL to mount a partition you have to label the partition with that same label. With ext2/ext3 partitions for example.

e2label /dev/sda1 /home

Will label the first partition in the first disk "/home". If you want to mount it in fstap file with that label you have to specify.

LABEL=/home /home ext3 defaults 1,2

If you don't want to use Labels just specify the disk/partition you have put you home partition in.

[robertdaleweir]

Hi
I am sorry it took so long to get back to all of you. I was able to get my problem solved with the help of all who posted. This was a very valuable addition to my knowledge of Linux in general and saved me a lot of effort. I thank you ever so much...