/home partition?

[seeker22]

I know what the / and swap partitions are for but what is the /home partition for? whats the point of it? is it just for like limiting how much space one user can use? or something like that, thanks.

[nuisance]

All new users have folders created for them in the /home partition by default. So /home is where all users keep there personal stuff collectively.

[nathaniel]

/home is for allowing every user you add in his/her personal space to drop files that they have permission in there also the directory size can be monitered but I never do, I have enough gigs for all. Their home path is in /home too.
example:
' /home/<username> '

NB

[fancypiper]

You can have is as a directory if you had rather. You don't need a separate partition for /home, but I like having it on a separate partition.

What happens if I decide to try another distro and would like to keep the stuff I have d/l from the net and the notes I have taken as well as my e-mail and stuff I want to keep?

If I have to re-install, I can do so without losing my stuff by chosing not to format the /home partition.

I did have to re-install about 5 times as I was pretty good at messing it up before I started learning command line.

[seeker22]

Thanks guys.. Yeah I didn't make a home partition cause I dont have alot of space but that's a really good idea fancypiper i'll think i'll do that from now on to.

[stick]

because the whole fscking world is just chomping at the bit to get into YOUR computer... they are all there,... billions, just wating for you to give them the slightest edge and wham... they are in... and they will know that you posted to lno... and they might even be able to pretend they are you and post a post you don't want... bla bla bla bla bla bla bla.... bla bla bla bla......


-- just make a / partition and a swap. Live crazy like me... i will bet you a paycheck you will be fine... or you could listen to those at lno who are posting from their bomb shelters while taking a break from writing their book "the government and bill gates is out to get me" and make all of these partitions to save yourself from the big computer hack that will come and ruin your life!

[ph34r]

I've got a separate drive for /home, /MP3s and /usr/local/games - that way, it is easy to change distros, etc. with out loosing anything I care about.

[bdl]

An extra /home partition can help in several ways:

1) Security. There are ways crackers can fill up your /home directory so that the entire system crashes, and other ways to access the system through your /home directory. If this is a seperate partition, these are kept at a minimum.

2) Space. You might want a seperate partition just due to the fact that you want extra space to store mp3's, ISO images, whatever. Use an extra hdd just to mount /home.

3) Convenience. Exporting the directories over NFS. While not common, some people have a single /home dir that they export over the network. Mount this as a seperate partition and export it to all the local machines you have an account on.

4) Backup. Saving the /home partition when the rest of the system goes down, or if you want to do an upgrade / reinstall, your personal data stays intact.

Hope this is helpful to you.

[edited for content, just like on TV ;) ]

[ 16 June 2001: Message edited by: bdl ]

[seeker22]

good points.. Is there any way I can resize my linux partitions with out reinstalling? im so sick of reinstalling.. could I go in to windows and use partition magic to re size? would it hurt anything? cause I really need to add more space.

[Craig McPherson]

Ext2resize can do that. It's not very flexible, though. It can do two things: expand a filesystem to fill a full partition after you've changed that partition's end cylinder value with fdisk -- ie, enlarge a partition by assimilating space after it, or, shrink a filesystem within a partition, allowing you to change that partition's end cylinder boundry -- ie, shrinking a partition to create unpartitioned space after it.

[seeker22]

hmm.. ok, but do you think partition magic would hurt it if I resized it with that? cause I would have to resize my windows partition to

[bdg1983]

I'm still using Partition Magic 5 and although I use PM to create the ext2 and swap partitions, I've never tried to resize any of the Linux partitions.

Do you have PM 6? I would verify either in the documentation you have with the package or research at Powerquest before resizing a ext2 partition.