Ubuntu Installation :: Upgrade Of Machine With Separate Home Partition?
Jul 16, 2010
I will be helping a friend upgrade from 9.04 through to 10.04 LTS, and I am aware that the machine was installed with a separate home partition. I know a clean install is an option however I am tempted by online version upgrades with the thought that any apps they are using will be carried over. Is this a realistic hope? I know that medibuntu for example does not survive a version upgrade.
I want to move my home directory to a separate partition so I can install the new versions of Ubuntu without losing my data. And while I'm at it, what other important directories should I move to separate partitions? And how do I do it? I'm guessing that the /boot directory should also be moved to its own partition too, yes? Because it has the GRUB in it, and if I removed Ubuntu to make way for a newer version of Ubuntu, I'll just get an error because the computer can't find the GRUB that doesn't exist anymore, right? And also, if I move those important yet-to-be-listed directories to their own separate partitions, how large should those partitions be?
I don't want to miss out on the upcoming Lucid Lynx (If it will work in the first place, of course ) By the way, I have an Ubuntu-Windows XP dual-boot system. I'll attach a screenshot of my partition table from GPartEd. You can see that I have about 300 GB. The largest partition is Ubuntu.
Many Ubuntu users seem have their /home folder on a separate partition (better security?). I have a OK dual-boot installation (Win7+Ubuntu 10.04) - should I try to move my /home folder ? If so, how ?I DO NOT want to get into any troubles with my existing setup !I have free (unallocated) disk space both outside and inside the extended partition which is used for Ubuntu (90 GB, Ubuntu is 60 GB ext4 + 7 GB swap).
I haven't been using Ubuntu for a couple of years. Yesterday I decided to fire up my ubuntu box and upgraded from 8.04 to 10.10.
The upgrade went fine, but when I boot it tells me that the /home dir cant be mounted. It allows me to Wait, Skip, or Manually mount it. If I skip I can log in and mount the partition that contains my /home folder so I know that nothing is corrupt. I'm sure my fstab just got overwritten during the upgrade, but, since its been so long, I don't recall how to (correctly) fix it back.
Cliffs: --Upgraded from 8.04 to 10.10 --/home dir is on a separate partition & is not mounting properly --How do I set it up so that my /home dir mounts on boot?
I'd just try messing around with fstab myself, but I really don't want to lose any data.
Compiz settings, my entire GUI would freeze up after the startup splash. It did the little ubuntu jingle and so on but wouldn't actually load up the desktop. I would've booted into recovery mode and deleted the settings that were messing it all up for me, but pressing ESC during grub did nothing! So as a last effort I reinstalled Ubuntu (Karmic) from the live CD on the first partition only, but I don't know how to make the second partition (with my old /home directory) the normal /home directory. The instructions linked above seem to require having done the whole process of moving the partition (so as to create "old" and "new" dirs, etc.).
So there are really two problems here: 1) How does one restore things to normal when a few too many cheeky moves with the desktop effects turns everything to pot? And 2) How does one reinstall Ubuntu with a separate /home partitions
I am about to do a clean install of Ubuntu 10.04 and I want to have my /home on a separate ntfs partition so that it can be accessed by windows 7. I know that i can move it after the install but i wold rather not go through all the problems of moving it.
I've read several accounts of users who upgraded Ubuntu versions and ran into problems. I read that putting /home on a separate partition can make it easier to do upgrades. But it seems to me application versions and even the default applications themselves change so much between Ubuntu releases that I question whether it's a good idea to have all the "OLD" config files and settings that get stored in /home sitting around when running a new Ubuntu release.Does anyone think it's a better idea to just put the whole Ubuntu install (i.e., / and /home) on the same partition? And then when upgrading, backup, and then just fresh install everything (to get the cleanest possible installation)?
Is there a way to setup a separate /home partition during a new installation of Ubuntu? If so, how. I've found guides about how to do it after installation, but it seems there ought to be a way to do it that way from the very beginning.
I was surprised not to find an existing thread on this anywhere, as I would expect this to be a common problem: I have the following partitions on my eee PC 100HE:
10GB Windows XP 5GB Linux Mint 8 5GB Ubuntu 9.10 NBR (awesome distro by the way!) 130GB Home partition shared by Linux Mint and Ubuntu NBR 2GB Swap partition shared by Linux Mint and Ubuntu NBR
I installed Ubuntu NBR after Mint. Immediately after install, the panel layout, menus and colour scheme were slightly messed up - presumeably because they had been "adopted" from the Mint settings in the home folder. I corrected them easily, but now I have the same problem in Mint. Is there any way I can get both distros to use the same /home folder, but different settings (i.e. the /home/username/. folders)? Can I get these settings folders put on a different partition for example?
And is this problem due only to the fact that these are 2 Ubuntu-based distros? Or will I have the same problem if/when I replace Mint with another distro, such as Fedora or Moblin?
Looks like I missed defining a /home dir during installation. It's been a while I have a spare partition now that I'd really love to use. Can you specify this still, or is it only allowed during an install?
recently i made a backup of my home directory in 10.10 before reinstalling 10.10. again.This time I chose to manually define the partitions (50GB Root, 25GB Swap, 325GB Home)Now i wish to migrate the old home into the newly installed home, which is on a separate partition.I have found the following documentation URL...Still, as a beginner I am not quite sure about the necessary steps to perform.As the new home is located on a separate partition is it possible to simple delete all directories there and copy all directories from old home to new home with rsync?
Do I have to install all the software that corresponds to the old home first followed by migrating home or first migrating home followed by installing the software such as thunderbird, Texlive2010 etc.Guess that migration should take place at a later stage. Otherwise my old profile files from firefox and thunderbird will be overwriten by new ones?
My debian 5 is up and running smoothly and act as file-server in the middle of windows network jungle using samba the only problem is, after backup an external hdd (213 GB) to my /home partition, I end up with message say that I'm running out free space. Fyi my debian installed on 1TB SATA disk, and I separate my /home partition from system what happen to my free space ? here is screenshot of my disk, using disk usage analyzer: is there is a way to get my space back or something missing on my setup.or I have to reinstall my debian and use LVM when partitioning my disk?
I keep my /home on a separate partition. After every clean install of Ubuntu my old panel configuration is loaded. Meaning, shortcuts on my panel and different applets I've put on my panels as well.
what file in the /home folder is keeping these settings? Simply, I'd like to delete so I can have that "fresh" install feeling on my desktop.
I have installed various distros/releases of linux over the past few days and have read of a few people keeping separate partitions for their /home folders. I have a few questions:
1) I assume /home is installed with the OS and would always be on the OS partition.
2) Can I repartition the drive even though I am already installed to allocate space or would I have to start from scratch, create the partitions, and reinstall the OS?
3) How much space would one need for a home folder? Majority of hdd right?
I'm about to reinstall Ubuntu and one thing I'd like to do is create a separate partition for /home. also what are the exact benefits of that?upgarding ubuntu doesn't necessarily delete your files right?is it just as a security measure in case the kernel becomes corrupted?
I have ubuntu installed as my main operating system with a separate home partition, I also have windows 7 here, although I haven't used it since I installed it. I was planning on using it a bit more, since I'm getting a bored of ubuntu, so I thought I'd get a little variation Anyway, I have this separate home partition (ext4) formatted, that I logically can't access from windows. So I thought I'd make a "shared" partition (NTFS) with my files on it, so I could access them from both ubuntu and windows. Now, can I revert to having my home partition on my Ubuntu partition, or do I have to reinstall or something?
I've been wanting to do this for awhile now, But just got around to having the time/energy to do it.Getting a separate /Home partition is my main goal,But Ive got a couple others as well.
I've never really done much work manually editing/extending/creating of partitions, Soo Im going to need really simple, noob-like instructions if possible. I'd love to get this on the first try without having to start all over.. So I come to you first, before I just jump in and start clicking things.
I dual boot Ubuntu and Vista. I don't have a whole lot of personal files (mostly everything is on the external HDD) and so I have a spare 55GB partition sitting around with nothing on it, and an almost full Vista 60GB partition. Is it possible to use this spare partition both as a /home and as a Windows Documents partition..?
I'd need to set Ubuntu to automount it and it'd need to be in FAT32 or NTFS for Windows to recognize it but I don't see why it shouldn't work... even though I have no clue how? I'll keep on researching but I couldn't find much concrete info on the topic. I'll try different search terms meanwhile.
I'm trying a fresh install of 11.2 but I couldn't figure out how to make the whole installation on the same logical extended partition.
It always wants to create a separate /home partition.
I have a second HDD with NTFS only for backup purposes, but the installer puts a grub entry for it too (windows 2). And this HDD is not even bootable. I don't have the balls to try to boot from it and see what happens. How to get rid of it?
I just need some clarification on the best upgrade path for me. I currently have Karmic installed with a separate partition for /home. I want to do a clean install of lucid with the CD.
What's the safest way to ensure my /home partition remains untouched? Should I install lucid overtop the karmic partition and then indicate a mount point for the other partition? or should I leave /home alone completely during installation and then just manually configure the mount point after install?
Edit: I had previously upgraded from jaunty to karmic via the update manager. This worked well but Karmic has felt very buggy overall so I feel a clean install might be best. although the audio is silent when the live cd boots :S
How would I go about moving a separate home partition back to /, and be able to delete the /home partition? I'm assuming I would have to copy the contents of /home to the root partition, and change fstab at the very least.
When I had 9.10 installed I had /home and / on separate partitions but this time, I wanted them both within the same. I downloaded my old home partition to an external drive, wiped the old partitions and installed lucid but now I can't mount the drive. I am trying to use:
Code: sudo mount -o loop -t auto /mnt/storage/home.img /mnt/oldhome/ but I get an error of wrong fs type, bad option or bad superblock. fdisk -l shows:
I created a separate /home partition after installing Karmic on a new Sony E series computer.
I used this HowTo : [url]
I copied all the files from the old /home/user using
On booting after the change, the new /home is correctly on a separate partition BUT during boot I get a message : Could not update ICEauthority file /home/user/.ICEauthority
I checked out posts from people with similar problems.
Ownership and permissions for /home/user/.ICEauthority are correct. Deleting the file & waiting for it to be recreated doesn't work. (Not sure I understood the right way to do this.)
But when I compare other hidden files in the new /home/user directory, quite a few now have their ownership changed to root.
I am unable to connect to my external monitor because of a permission problem (probably connected).
On booting after the change, the new /home is correctly on a separate partition BUT during boot I get a message :
Could not update ICEauthority file /home/user/.ICEauthority
I checked and the ownership and permissions for /home/user/.ICEauthority are correct. The suggested remedy of deleting the file & waiting for it to be recreated doesn't work either. But when I compare other hidden files in the new /home/user directory, quite a few now have their ownership changed to root. & I am unable to connect to my external monitor because of a permission problem (probably connected).
I encrypt a partition using LUKS, and store personal data on this partition. Then create a user account that solely deals with this partition and insulated from the Internet. Normally for each boot I do not even need to mount the LUKS encrypted partition, and when I mount that partition under that special user account, I can make sure that the Internet is cut off. I'm going to do the alternate installation these days, could you provide a brief sketch regarding what steps I should go through to implement the above result?
I have a dual boot WinXP / Kubuntu system. Recently, I tried to upgrade from 9.10 to 10.04. I have my Kubuntu partition set up with separate partitions for / , /home , and swap. Naturally, I wanted to wipe the slate clean, so I formatted / and left /home alone before doing the install. However, my /home partition was encrypted with the standard crypto that you get when you install. I just deleted the way in by wiping my / partition. Now all of my files are on my drive but encrypted. I do have the unencrypted passphrase given to me when the hard drive was first encrypted, so I am sure there is some way to get my files, but I am unsure how to apply it.
While installing with a separate /boot partition I cannot get two distinct copies of ubu installed on one machine and be able to choose between them. Each is installed on a different hard drive. x64 versions. I've had this issue both ways:
Stepsinstall mythbuntu install ubuntu Result
Two entries in grub. Both cause ubuntu to boot
Stepsinstall ubuntu install mythbuntu Result
Two entries in grub. Both cause mythbuntu to boot Grub 2 is so unfriendly for fixing these things. I don't know where to make changes. Ok, Grub 2 is very powerful, maybe it's the lagging documentation, or lack of tutorials that is the problem. But I don't know how to fix this. Do I start over without the /boot partition? Do I bail on ubu?
I have a 320gb USB hard drive, one partition for my files, one for playing Wii games, and one which I would like to use for an Ubuntu instillation.
To do this, I partitioned my disk accordingly using Windows, then booted from the Ubuntu CD to install the OS to my external hard drive partition. It asked me where I wanted to install the boot loader, so I selected the hard drive itself, rather than the specific partition, reasoning that it would scan the hard drive for a boot record.
However, when I booted it (with USB boot selected) it simply said "No Operating System found, replace system disk and press enter" or something similar.