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Manually partitioning after the fact

  Date: Jan 23    Category: Unix / Linux / Ubuntu    Views: 468
  

When I did my Wubi install, I found my memory space for /home wasn't sufficient.
Someone on the list pointed me to instructions on moving /home to a separate
space, which worked fine.

Is there a similar way to do this after one has done a standard install of a
Ubuntu version? I'm reading up on how to manually edit the partition table so I
can have a separate /home space, and I don't want to undertake that. I'm a
beginner and know nothing about mount points and lots of other stuff here that
looks like it might be important.

When I was in basic training, our dorm chief, who's the head trainee, was
marching us somewhere. He didn't know what he was doing, except for a 5-minute
briefing from the sergeant on how to order troops to march, which is actually
more complex than you would think. We came upon a low barrier, and he knew no
command to tell us to march over the barrier, so he stopped us and said, "'Fall
out' over here and 'fall in' over there." Easy.

So I'm thinking it would be handy to do something similar with the install. Just
use the largest contiguous space and then tell /home "Ok, 'fall out' from over
there and 'fall in' over here," and the data gets copied from one spot on the
disk to another.

I still then have to reload my old /home from my broken Wubi install, then
install a couple other Ubuntu versions.

So is there such a procedure to move /home after a standard install, and am I
crazy for attempting this?

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1 Answer Found

 
Answer #1    Answered On: Jan 23    

So far as I know, there isn't, sorry. The only way I am aware of is to
boot with a live CD; use gparted to shrink the existing partition and
create a new one in the freed space; edit /etc/fstab to add the newly
created partition and tell the system to mount it at /home; copy your
files into the newly created /home partition.

It really isn't hard, honest. So long as you don't change anything
already in fstab and only add your new /home (or, possibly, simply
change the old /home entry, if it exists, to point to the new partition)
then you can't do too much to damage the system.

There is a very slight risk that the gparted operations might possibly
damage the filesystem, but all I can say is that, in five years of using
gparted to do some pretty weird things to my filesystems, I have never
had a problem.

Oh, and no, you are most definitely not crazy to be attempting this.
There are all sorts of good reasons for having /home on a separate
partition, not least of which is the fact that you'll learn something
new

 
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