is this a bad idea?

grepcomputers · Guru Joined: 16 Sep 2003 Posts: 375

I like having all my imporant data in /home, so I can blow away the other partitions if I suddenly need to reinstall (I know, unlikely).

Right now, /root is in /. I have some stuff in root which I want to keep backed up, as well as /etc (so I keep all my config files).

Is it better just to make copies of them periodically, or could I try...
mv /etc /home
mv /root /home
ln -s /home/etc /etc
ln -s /home/root /root

I just wondered if there are any ramifications to this that I have not forseen.

cheers...
...grep

cheezyboy · n00b Joined: 04 Feb 2004 Posts: 34

That sounds bad since / is mounted before /home and the config files in /etc are used for booting some of the stuff. I am not entirely sure what all might happen but I don't think that would be good. Remember grub/lilo mount the root partition during boot and somewhere in there is /etc/fstab which has the list of partitions to mount and if it isn't in / you would have to mount /home with grub or lilo during boot somehow.

Instead you might look into a cron job or something similar to backup /etc periodically not sure how I haven't played with the task scheduler stuff at all.

I think you might be alright with the /root though. I'm not sure what else might happen either.

Earthwings · Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2004 8:39 pm Post subject:

Better do it the other way round (make symlinks in /home to /etc and /root).
I think it would work your way with /root, but not with /etc if /home is an extra partition. The problem will then be on /boot that /etc/fstab is a symlink to /home/etc/fstab, which is not yet mounted, thus not accessible and keeps the information on how to mount it. A similar problem is with /etc/inittab which is needed before filesystems get mounted.

Edit: cheezyboy was faster. I shouldn't open a dozen threads concurrently :wink:

Some_Other_Nerd · Posted: Sat Apr 24, 2004 4:07 pm Post subject:

I have a simmilar question, do you think this is ok?

mv /home /var
mv /root /var/home
ln -s /var/home /home
ln -s /var/home/root /root
usermod -d /var/home/root root
...

I think this makes sense (after reading man hier) because this way I can have all my files (like /var/www and /var/bak) backed up, not just my home folders.
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PowerFactor · Posted: Sat Apr 24, 2004 4:32 pm Post subject:

It would be ok to put /home on /var I think that was even teh default on some old unix variants. IMO it would be better to put /var/www and /var/bak and whatever else you want on /home. I just say that because mozilla(and probably some other progs) doesn't like it when the partition containing it's preffs dir fills up while it is running. It loses all you bookmarks and prefs if that happens. And /var is the most likely partition to sudeenly fill up in case of some failed emerges or a runaway log.
But I think putting /root on any partition besides / is not a good idea. You need it there in case you have to do some system maintenance with the other partitions unmounted. And as cheezyboy mentioned, moving /etc off of / is a definate no-no. Unless you have an initrd setup that will mont /etc before init is started.

Some_Other_Nerd · Posted: Sat Apr 24, 2004 5:25 pm Post subject:

Thanks, the two problems you mentioned don't really seem that important to me, I always do major system maintanance with LiveNetBSD or KNOPPIX and I almost constantly montior HD usage so if a log got ou of hand I would notice and kill it before it did damage.
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grepcomputers · Guru Joined: 16 Sep 2003 Posts: 375

Hmm, a lot of good points have been made.
It seems simple enough to just write a cron job or something that will copy /etc and /root to /home every day at 2AM or something...or even not bother. After all, if something happens that I need to reinstall, I can always boot the Gentoo LiveCD and copy those folders into /home, then blow everything else away and go from there.

cheers...
...grep