Re: [LUG] Separate Home Partition

[Tom <madtom1999@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 07/09/13 15:41, Simon Avery wrote:

As Brad says, the UID and GID's are kind of important and there's no guarantee (or likelyhood) the new install would share them.

And if that is your intention, just backup (which you're doing already, of course) /home if you must wipe the partition and install it over the new one.

In both cases you may need to manually change the UID and GIDs. There are tools available for this if you have many users to change; as you can imagine it's a bit of a pickle when you have hundreds or even thousands.

On 7 September 2013 13:36, Brad Rogers <brad@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sat, 07 Sep 2013 13:23:02 +0100
Neil <barnaby@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hello Neil,

>The idea, as I understand it, is to install the new system files into
>the root partition, replacing the previous ones, but to leave the home
>partition alone. This would save having to restore the previous home
>files and make it quicker and easier to be ready with the new version.

>This would require that the home files be in their own partition. Is
>this in fact feasible and/or feasible?

This will work as long as the UIDs match.  If it's a one person machine
with only the one login ID (other than root) it shouldn't be a problem.
If there are two (or more) login IDs, then you'll have to ensure that
the IDs match across installations.  The easiest way is to ensure you
only add one user during the install process.  Other users can be added
later, allowing you to choose which IDs are assigned to which users.

The point is, it's not enough for the *names* to match, the underlying
UID number has to match too, otherwise everything can go pear shaped.  I
got caught by that a few years ago when upgrading from one version of
Mandrake to another.

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To change UID and GID the hard way:
find /home -mount -user UID -exec chown newuser {} \;
find /home -mount -group GID -exec chgrp newgroup {} \;
Tom te tom te tom

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