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Possible Duplicate:
post installation /home partition

Using 12.04. I heard but never tried with /home as a separate partition. What my question is just assume that i have already /home and I'm trying to have a fresh install. So at the installation process what steps I've to take.

because my doubts are here:

  1. Are we have to select /home also in installation? Or will it do automatically?
  2. What about all the configuration files in home? Will they load automatically or we have to manually? If so how?
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  • The basics are you create the partition, copy the files there, then mount that partition as /home. While mounted, it will replace the existing /home, and hide existing files, if present. Then, when you install, you will be able to specify that partition to be mounted as /home just like you specify the root and swap drive. Sep 17, 2012 at 1:44

2 Answers 2

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This may be a little dated but still applies. Follow the tutorial from Physocats "Create a separate home partition in Ubuntu". If you have issues, there is a text-only (command-line-driven) guide for this process here

Requirements:

You must use a live CD for this process, for two reasons:

1.In order to resize your existing / partition, it needs to be unmounted. The only way to unmount it is for it not to be in use, which means you can't boot to your regular Ubuntu installation while resizing it... which means you need a live CD. By default, the Ubuntu live CD does not automatically mount internal partitions and drives, but if you happen to notice the drive appear on the desktop, right-click it to unmount it before starting this process.

2 If you screw up your installation by accident, you can use the live CD to restore your old settings and, in the worst situation, at least recover your important files.

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  • Thanks but I'm not getting it and I will represent it more clearly .
    – Raja G
    Sep 17, 2012 at 3:42
  • This is a fairly straight forward tutorial. I recommend reading in entirely then proceed with the configuration.
    – Ringtail
    Sep 18, 2012 at 3:32
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During an install, you need to manually partition your drives. Choose the main partition, format it, and mount it as / and then select the partition for your /home, format it and mount it as /home.

All of the config files will be put there after the partitioning is done.

If you have already installed the OS, copy all of the files from /home to the desired partition, and (remember to back everything up) delete them if disk space is short on / Then edit /etc/fstab, and add at the bottom

/dev/<new_partition> /home <filesystem_type> <mounting_options> <dump(probably zero)> <pass(probably 1)>

and whenever you boot, /home will seamlessly be the new partition. You can mount it manually the first time to not have to reboot.

edit: if you are not sure, the filesystem type you probably want is ext4.

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