Re: [gentoo-user] Advice about setting up split home directory

["Walter Dnes" <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>]

On Mon, Aug 04, 2008 at 03:10:37PM +1000, Alan E. Davis wrote
> Norberto and  Josh:
> 
> Thank you for the suggestion.  It's on the back burner.  I have the space to
> experiment with it now.  I have balked for the time being on basis of,
> partly, my need to be able to swap drives in and out, and have it clear in
> mind which partitions belong to what.  Also my main drive is a 10000 RPM
> faster drive, and I'd like to keep the partitions or directories that are
> mainly for storage separated.  I really do notice a difference in the
> performance of the drive.  this is somewhat of a conundrum: how to keep the
> current projects focused on the faster drive.

  There's another approach with bind mounts to reduce wasted space.  The
following example is not a joke (notwithstanding the opinions of some
posters here <g>).  I used a 500 megabyte / partition, playing it safe
because it was my first try, but I could've gotten away with 200 megs.
Here's what "fdisk -l" and "df" show...

[d530][root][~] fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd0000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1       60801   488384001    5  Extended
/dev/sda5               1          62      497952   83  Linux
/dev/sda6              63         549     3911796   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7             550       60801   483974158+  83  Linux

[d530][root][~] df
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5               482186     30376    426913   7% /
udev                     10240       152     10088   2% /dev
/dev/sda7            483959368 100296316 383663052  21% /home
shm                    1031872         0   1031872   0% /dev/shm


  I create empty /opt /tmp /usr and /var directories in the 500 meg main
partition (sda5).  Except for swap, the rest of the drive is allocated
to sda7, which is mounted as /home.  I create /home/bindmounts and then
/home/bindmounts/opt /home/bindmounts/tmp /home/bindmounts/usr and
/home/bindmounts/var.  Then I bindmount them to their equivalants on the
/ partition.  I have a script to set up the correct permissions.  The
result is that you can run with a 200 meg main partition, without using
LVM.  Under /home is /home/misc, where I put /home/misc/movies/
/home/misc/music and /home/misc/photos.

  This may not be ideal for a production server, but I like it at home,
because I don't have to screw around with multiple partitions.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>