[plug] Changing the mount point of /home

[Richard Meyer]

On Sat, 2006-02-25 at 18:24 +0800, John Godfrey Foster wrote:
> My Suse linux 10 mounted 	/home 	as a locked folder on the same partition as 
> the system (hda8). This partition is now some 75% full.

How do you mean a "locked folder"?

If you mean that it's just a directory in the / partition, then follow
the instructions below, otherwise, please enlighten us.
> 
> I have a 6GB partition (hda6) which is not used. Suse recognises this 
> partition under path-folder 	/data1; and 
> also on the desktop under  icon My Computer then media/hda6
> 
> How do I change the mount point of /home to hda6 so that this change is 
> recognised by the system and given that its present folder at  hda8 is shown 
> as locked.

OK, If you can actually copy data onto the /media/hda6, then drop back
to a non-graphical mode (to prevent copying open config files across) by
entering
$ su
root-password
# init 3
# cp -a /home /media/hda6

after the command has completed, make sure that there is data
in /media/hda6

#df 

command will do.

Edit /etc/fstab, and add a line that looks similar to the following 

/dev/hdb6            /home                reiserfs   defaults
1 2

and delete other lines /etc/fstab that refer to /dev/hda6

note that the reiserfs should be changed to ext3 if the filesystem type
is different.

DO  NOT REBOOT or anything exotic YET

delete the contents of your /home directory
DO NOT RUN THIS COMMAND IF YOU FORGOT TO RUN IT AFTER MAKING THE CHANGES
AND THEN REBOOTED.

#rm -r /home/*

reboot the system

$df will show whether you are using the the new partition.

Remember that if it breaks your system, you get to keep all the
pieces  ;-)  - However I did the same exercise a couple of years ago,
and this is how I did it (IIRC).
-- 
Richard Meyer <meyerri at westnet.com.au>