[Solved] How to get /home back

[frisbeelab]

I just installed PCLinuxOS 2010.  I had 2009.2 installed and have /home on a seperate partition.  I guess I missed something during the 2010 install as it did not use the previous /home.  

What can I do to switch my empty 2010 home to the /home partition?

Thanks!

[frisbeelab]

Here is an FDisk of my partition structure
sda7 is my old /home

See attached.

[Bald Brick]

First log in as root. Usually you shouldn't, but this time you should.

Then change the name of your new /home directory to something else, for instance /home.new. (Your new /home won't be entirely empty, and the directory where you are going to mount your old home should be.)

Then create a new directory called /home. (Now it will be empty.)

Then navigate to /etc and open the file fstab in an editor.

Add the line:

Code: [Select]

/dev/sda7  /home  ext3  defaults  1  2(provided that your old home is formatted as ext3. If it isn't you have to replace "ext3" with the correct filesystem.)

Reboot and log in as your normal user.

If everything works well and you've got your old settings back, you can su to root and remove the directory /home.new. If everything doesn't work you may have to copy some newly created hidden files and directories from /home.new/<yourname> first.



Instead of "/dev/sda7" you could use "UUID=<uuid-number-of-partition>", and if you have given the partition a label you have the third possibility of using "LABEL=<label>".

The command

Code: [Select]

blkid /dev/sda7will show you the UUID number, the label (if it exists) and the filesystem.

[frisbeelab]

Thanks blackbird.  I gave your suggestion a reply.  Renamed the new /home to /home.new, etc.  Did a cut and paste of the line you suggested into fstab.  When I rebooted I could no longer log in..... not even to root.  So I figured it only takes a half hour to install again ..... so I did.  This time I was careful to make sure that I pointed the ./home to sda7.

Well that worked..... sort of.  My old /home is indeed there and thunderbird works fine with all my e-mail id's and folders intact.
However the look is not at all what I expected or what it looked like when I built a new home.  None of the desktop icons appeared, new or old.  I am not at all pleased with it as configured now.  Clicking the PC icon in the bottom left of the panel brings up a much different look..... neither like 2009.2 or the 2010 install I had yesterday when I installed a new /home.

Any recommendations?

Thanks! 

[wayne1932]

I had a similar problem on my laptop.  I thought I had told the install to mount my old home partition as /home/, but it didn't happen.

 So what I did was as root, I deleted my /home folder under the root tree.  Then I went to the configure hard drive under PCC, and did a mount (the partition that home is on) as /home.  This brought everything back except it looked ugly because the original .kde4 folder was gone.  So I booted up my livecd and copied the .kde4 folder from the livecd into my /home/wayne folder.  It complained about writing into an existing folder, even after I had renamed the .kde4 folder to something else, but it worked. 

[Bald Brick]

Thanks blackbird.  I gave your suggestion a reply.  Renamed the new /home to /home.new, etc.  Did a cut and paste of the line you suggested into fstab.  When I rebooted I could no longer log in..... not even to root.

It's hard to say what might have happened. Did you really create a new /home? Or did you possibly create a directory called home somewhere else than directly under the root directory (/)?

So I figured it only takes a half hour to install again ..... so I did.  This time I was careful to make sure that I pointed the ./home to sda7.

Well that worked..... sort of.  My old /home is indeed there and thunderbird works fine with all my e-mail id's and folders intact.
However the look is not at all what I expected or what it looked like when I built a new home.  None of the desktop icons appeared, new or old.  I am not at all pleased with it as configured now.

You can change the look of KDE4 in very many ways. You could rightclick your desktop and change the desktop activity from desktop view to folder view, and then you could point the folder view to ~/Desktop. ("~" stands for /home/<user>.)

Clicking the PC icon in the bottom left of the panel brings up a much different look..... neither like 2009.2 or the 2010 install I had yesterday when I installed a new /home.

The menu icon is just a widget, and there are several alternative ones that can be installed instead. But first try rightclicking it and changing the style to Kickoff.

[Bald Brick]

It complained about writing into an existing folder, even after I had renamed the .kde4 folder to something else,

The .kde4 folder is immediately recreated if you remove it or rename it, so the complaint is understandable: the system had already created a new one.

[menotu]

Thanks blackbird.  I gave your suggestion a reply.  Renamed the new /home to /home.new, etc.  Did a cut and paste of the line you suggested into fstab.  When I rebooted I could no longer log in..... not even to root.  So I figured it only takes a half hour to install again ..... so I did.  This time I was careful to make sure that I pointed the ./home to sda7.

Well that worked..... sort of.  My old /home is indeed there and thunderbird works fine with all my e-mail id's and folders intact.
However the look is not at all what I expected or what it looked like when I built a new home.  None of the desktop icons appeared, new or old.  I am not at all pleased with it as configured now.  Clicking the PC icon in the bottom left of the panel brings up a much different look..... neither like 2009.2 or the 2010 install I had yesterday when I installed a new /home.

Any recommendations?

Thanks! 

First off let me say my personal way of doing it - there are other ways (maybe quicker and easier) but I find it easier to do a completely fresh install (/home as well) and then copy my /home data over bit by bit and doing a few restarts in-between and that way I can see which folder/data caused the problem (if any) and can quickly resolve it.

I find doing it this way - especially between different versions (e.g. 2009.x to 2010) far less problematic.

But as I say, this is only my personal way 

[denoobifyme]

Blackbird, I just want to thank you for your thorough, concise and helpful way of, well. helping. You and menotu consistently provide what I'm looking for in a forum -- answers. There are others who do so as well, and I've been meaning to thank them personally. This post gave reminded me to do so with you.

[Bald Brick]

denoobifyme,

You're very welcome. A pity my answer didn't help you better this time. 

[menotu]

denoobifyme

Its a pleasure knowing our posts are able to help a little - many thanks for your kind words

[denoobifyme]

Blackbird -- had I had this particular problem, it would have (friendly smile). I was thinking of something else when I clicked on it. My problems are myriad, though largely self-inflicted, and I'm trying to teach myself to solve them and sparing the forum my whining until I give up and avail myself of those far more experienced.

[denoobifyme]

menuto -- many welcomes for your kind thanks.

[frisbeelab]

blackbird thanks for the follow-up! 

Quote from: frisbeelab on Yesterday at 07:09:52 PM
Thanks blackbird.  I gave your suggestion a reply.  Renamed the new /home to /home.new, etc.  Did a cut and paste of the line you suggested into fstab.  When I rebooted I could no longer log in..... not even to root.

It's hard to say what might have happened. Did you really create a new /home? Or did you possibly create a directory called home somewhere else than directly under the root directory (/)?

Yes The /home was indeed in the /partition.  As you suggested I renamed it. I expect something funky happened with the fstab change..... but whatever, I am past that now and do have my old data in the /home partition now.

Quote
So I figured it only takes a half hour to install again ..... so I did.  This time I was careful to make sure that I pointed the ./home to sda7.

You can change the look of KDE4 in very many ways. You could rightclick your desktop and change the desktop activity from desktop view to folder view, and then you could point the folder view to ~/Desktop. ("~" stands for /home/<user>.)

OK, I looked and I am currently set to Desktop, so that's good.

Clicking the PC icon in the bottom left of the panel brings up a much different look..... neither like 2009.2 or the 2010 install I had yesterday when I installed a new /home.

The menu icon is just a widget, and there are several alternative ones that can be installed instead. But first try rightclicking it and changing the style to Kickoff.

Tried the above and the answer is that I was already on Kickoff.  I tried selecting "Switch to classic menu style" which took me to the format I was expecting.   I'm getting closer, that's much better! 

Next question..... when I hover over an icon on the desktop, a vertical menu appears.... see attached image.  How an I stop that from appearing automatically and perhaps only pop up on a right mouse click?

Thanks everyone for your help on this.  Some very good advice.  Next full install (PCLinuxOS 2011?)  I think I may indeed go the route of letting a new home get built in an empty partition and then copy over only those things I want.   

[Bald Brick]

when I hover over an icon on the desktop, a vertical menu appears.... see attached image.  How an I stop that from appearing automatically and perhaps only pop up on a right mouse click?

The icons you've created are actually plasma widgets (in KDE4 speak) and the vertical menu is there to let you move, resize, rotate, edit, and remove them. You can get rid of the vertical bar by rightclicking anywhere on your desktop and locking your widgets. (But then you have to unlock them before you can move or resize them. A right click won't be enough to get the "menu" back.)

In folder view (and in the folder view widget) you can have icons that behave more like icons used to behave.