On Thu, September 13, 2012 5:26 pm, lee wrote: > "Weaver" <wea...@riseup.net> writes: > >> On Thu, September 13, 2012 4:20 am, Ralf Mardorf wrote: >>> On Thu, 2012-09-13 at 04:10 -0700, Weaver wrote: >>>> If you find, in time, that you are running out of drive space, instaal >>>> a bigger drive, install the / and swap and again, allocate the rest >>>> as /home and copy it over. >>> >>> How big should / become? Okay, modern drives have that much capacities >>> that for an empty drive or much unallocated space, simply fifty-fifty >>> should work. But what does argue against having root and home on the >>> same partition? >> >> So that, if it is required, you can move your /home to a separate drive >> if >> needed over time. >> If you write of an installation of just the one partition, your data >> disappears as well. Having a separate /home gives you some protection >> and >> flexibility. >> This will be something our newbie would discover as a knowledge >> progression, but a pleasant and, on occasion, necessary discovery. >> >> You can always do a reinstall, preserving all data, with a separate >> /home. >> Regards, > > Huh? > > You cannot determine the size of the /home partition by the size of > another storage device that may be installed or not, now or in the > future.
GParted can. No matter what size you make the /home partition, you can > always back it up provided you have some sort of storage media with > sufficient capacity by the time it is needed. After they gain a successful install, a good project would be to get on top of backup2L or Grsync. > > You can backup your /home directory just fine even when it doesn't > reside on a separate partition. Good backups, using RAID and an UPS > give you some protection while using a dedicated partition for /home > doesn't give you much. Just imagine the user making a mistake with the > usage of '#rm -rf' or something going wrong with /home during a > re-install. > > Do you expect users to re-size their /home partitions for flexibility? > Before you do that, you need a backup. When you have a backup, you > don't really need to re-size it. They will not be performing this operation immediately. First they will need to use what they have. > > Do you seriously want the clueless user to lose their data as a pleasant > learning experience rather than advising them well so data loss might be > prevented? They cannot absorb all the knowledge in all the documentation by printing it out and swallowing it. I appreciate that these things have to become familiar, but wouldn't that be better after the installation? > > You could also suggest using only half of the available disk space in > some configurations so that the user can use it to make backups when > they find out that they need a different partitioning. And if the drive only has enough space in the first place? Just install, then buy an external drive. Cheap enough these days. I'm looking at buying an external WD 1.5 TB for $99. Keep things simple and they work. First the installation. After that the next rung. Regards, Weaver -- "It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government." -- Thomas Paine -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/82d9c96aaf5c850db8b9523ace466789.squir...@fruiteater.riseup.net
