I ran across this web page one day will upgrading from 8.04 to 8.10 intrepid. I guess if i would have had my home directory on a separate partition all my settings and data would have remained in place. What does anyone think about doing this to an already installed version of ubuntu? is having a separate /home partition normally recommended?
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/separatehome
This is not an XBMC related question.
Please use
http://ubuntuforums.org/ for this kind of question, you'll find better help there.
well i get your point, but isnt everyones data saved in their $HOME/.xbmc directory? In this case when upgrading software, either for the latest builds, the new vdpau, or whatever, it may come in handy to not loose your database.
I would not do it. Lots of work for not much in return. Rule of thumb, backup your stuff before doing an upgrade.
Yes, it is recommended and easy to do on an already running system.
Login as root and ensure no users with a home in /home are logged in. Create a new partition (or logical volume), create the filesystem on it, mount the filesystem, move /home/* to the new mountpoint, unmount it, mount it at /home. You're done.
It's also best to put /tmp and /var on separate partitions; they have temporary space that could get filled up and render your system unusable. Even the 5% reserved for root on ext2/3/4 won't save you if it's a root-owned process that's out of control.
I think it's fairly ridiculous that Ubuntu doesn't do this by default during installation. If you bork your system and need to reinstall, it just adds an unneeded layer of complexity.