[GTALUG] Home Partitions

[Howard Gibson via talk]

I have some time on my hands. :(

I am doing some website updates, including some Linux install instructions I have posted. I have an old 32_bit laptop here which is now a playtoy upon which I can install anything I want. I have just installed Ubuntu, minus all the customization I normally do. Ubuntu's default install is to place root and /home all on the same partition. My default behaviour is to separate them. I want to be able to blow away the operating system and install something else, without disturbing /home. I want to post notes to non-technical new users, and make things as simple as possible.

What do all of you out there think of separate /home partions. Necessary? Not necessary?

Installing a new OS on a Ubuntu box means backing up and recovering /home. How reliably upgradable is Ubuntu?

[Val Kulkov via talk]

Post by Howard Gibson via talk
I have some time on my hands. :(
I am doing some website updates, including some Linux install
instructions I have posted. I have an old 32_bit laptop here which is now
a playtoy upon which I can install anything I want. I have just installed
Ubuntu, minus all the customization I normally do. Ubuntu's default
install is to place root and /home all on the same partition. My default
behaviour is to separate them. I want to be able to blow away the
operating system and install something else, without disturbing /home. I
want to post notes to non-technical new users, and make things as simple as
possible.
What do all of you out there think of separate /home partions.
Necessary? Not necessary?
Installing a new OS on a Ubuntu box means backing up and recovering
/home. How reliably upgradable is Ubuntu?

Ubuntu has been my primary desktop OS since Ubuntu 10.04. From 10.04 to
14.04, I attempted to run dist-upgrades a few times and each time had
problems of varying magnitudes. IIRC each time, from 10.04 to 14.04
(including short term support releases) I reverted to making clean installs
with backup and restore of the home partition.

I stopped attempting dist-upgrades at 14.04. Since then, I have been
keeping /root and /home on the same partition. My upgrade process can now
be briefly summarized as follows:

1. Backup contents of /home, or shrink the existing partition containing
/root and /home to a minimum size to make space for a new parition for the
new installation.
2. Install Ubuntu, either on the existing partition (overwriting the
current install) or on the newly created partition.
3. Selectively restore /home, omitting all of the existing dot-files
(hidden files) in /home or migrate from the old partition.
4. Manually restore configs from .local, .config, .gconf and other
dot-files and dot-dirs, paying attention to breaking changes in the config
files. This is by far the most time-consuming and tedious step in my
upgrade process. Unfortunately, I have not yet found a way to automate this
process. New Ubuntu versions often contain upgraded applications with
breaking changes in their config files. I suspect that many of my failures
during dist-upgrades were caused by breaking changes in application configs.

Note that the recent Ubuntu distros do not require a separate swap
partition. Ubuntu 18.04, for one, happily creates a swap file for you
during the installation process. The main benefit of using a swap file
rather than a partition is that it is easy to increase the size of the swap
file if needed.