Dev1 Galaxy Forum / [SOLVED] Shifting /home

Re: [SOLVED] Shifting /home

dummy@example.com (chris2be8) — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 16:10:54 +0000

Glad to hear its sorted.

I'm not sure if your analysis is right, but it sounds reasonable.

I spent several years as a UNIX admin before I retired. But the servers my team were looking after didn't have GUIs installed, to save memory. So I know UNIX/Linux from the command line quite well, but I'm not very familiar with GUIs. Still that seems a complimentary skill set to a lot of the others on this forum.

Re: [SOLVED] Shifting /home

dummy@example.com (vrgovinda) — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 16:34:26 +0000

chris2be8 wrote:

If /home is the disk you expect enter ls -al /home to see what files are in it.

Exactly! I just thought what could be the problem. It occurred to me that although I have copied the files and directories into the new /home, I hadn't changed the ownership. ls -al /home revealed that.

sudo chown -R vrgovinda:vrgovinda /home/vrgovinda/.[^.]*

and

sudo chown -R vrgovinda:vrgovinda /home/*

did the trick.

My analysis is this: the system wasn't able to write into some file due to ownership issues. That's why I couldn't login in to the GUI but was able to get through the TTY. After changing the ownership and rebooting, I could get back the GUI. Is my analysis right?

Thanks to all.

Re: [SOLVED] Shifting /home

dummy@example.com (chris2be8) — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 16:12:38 +0000

Having logged on to tty1 run:
df -k which should show what disks are mounted.
If /home is the disk you expect enter ls -al /home to see what files are in it.
If that looks OK try which login which should return /bin/login or /usr/bin/login

Post output from the above commands if still stuck.

Re: [SOLVED] Shifting /home

dummy@example.com (Tatwi) — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 14:45:40 +0000

What does it say in /var/log/slim.log? It could be that there is an entry in your ~/.xinitrc file (or it could be missing if your backup didn't include hidden files).

You could also try (as root)

dpkg-reconfigure slim

I've had to do that a few times for a few things over the years.

vrgovinda said:
My analysis is this: the system wasn't able to write into some file due to ownership issues.

Man, I should have caught that one! Glad you fixed it.

Re: [SOLVED] Shifting /home

dummy@example.com (vrgovinda) — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 14:33:40 +0000

Tatwi wrote:

after creating p3, list your disks by UUID to find the UUID of p3
...
Then edit /etc/fstab so that p3 is in there as the home partition

I did both these steps. When I restarted and arrived at login, typed my username and password. slim complained failed to execute login command

But I was able to login through the TTY1 (by pressing Alt + Ctrl + F1)

I am stuck here. Please help.

Re: [SOLVED] Shifting /home

dummy@example.com (Tatwi) — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 14:14:09 +0000

after creating p3, list your disks by UUID to find the UUID of p3

rob@devuan:~$ ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jun 30 09:22 34b16a64-a6d5-4d8e-9b09-3898bfdae329 -> ../../sda2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Jun 30 08:08 4057e87b-69a1-4e23-bef6-8f8ae9862de6 -> ../../nvme0n1p2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Jun 30 08:08 5028-CF3D -> ../../nvme0n1p1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jun 30 09:22 7EEB-FDE9 -> ../../sda1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Jun 30 08:08 c03cf604-fe63-494e-90e1-726c3a0a8260 -> ../../nvme0n1p3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Jun 30 08:08 c51ddc0b-d1fd-4371-a22b-042b3ccfd3d0 -> ../../nvme0n1p4

Then edit /etc/fstab so that p3 is in there as the home partition

UUID=c51ddc0b-d1fd-4371-a22b-042b3ccfd3d0 /home           ext4    defaults        0       2

Examples are from my laptop with a SATA hard drive plugged by USB for demonstration purposes. My /home is on nvme0n1p4, where yours will be on nvme0n1p3, otherwise it will look about the same.

Re: [SOLVED] Shifting /home

dummy@example.com (Camtaf) — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 07:40:04 +0000

Use fstab & disk ID to set it up.

Re: [SOLVED] Shifting /home

dummy@example.com (vrgovinda) — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 04:50:46 +0000

Thanks for the first steps!

just remove p4 & p5, then create p3 as the new /home, & copy over your data.

- removing p4 & p5 is not a problem
- creating p3 and copying the data is also clear.

- But how do I tell p2 that p3 is the "new" /home?

Suppose I were to use gparted. Can I just format the new partition as /home and copy over the data? Is that sufficient? Since the partition UUID would be a new one, should I tinker /etc/fstab?

Re: [SOLVED] Shifting /home

dummy@example.com (Camtaf) — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 16:57:15 +0000

If you are confident of your /home back up, I would just remove p4 & p5, then create p3 as the new /home, & copy over your data.

[SOLVED] Shifting /home

dummy@example.com (vrgovinda) — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 14:22:39 +0000

Hi all.

I have a Nvme and SSD in my laptop.

SSD has Devuan Daedalus (/dev/sda5) running nicely.

Device     Boot    Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *        2048   1026047   1024000   500M ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)
/dev/sda2        1028094 976773119 975745026 465.3G  5 Extended
/dev/sda5        1028096  32485375  31457280    15G 83 Linux
/dev/sda6       32487424 976773119 944285696 450.3G 83 Linux

Nvme has the following, Devuan Daedalus /dev/nvme0n1p2 and /dev/nvme0n1p4; /dev/nvme0n1p5 is /home.

Device            Start        End   Sectors  Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1     2048    2050047   2048000 1000M EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p2  2050048   56575999  54525952   26G Linux filesystem (NEW)
/dev/nvme0n1p4 56576000   98519039  41943040   20G Linux filesystem (OLD)
/dev/nvme0n1p5 98519040 1000214527 901695488  430G Linux filesystem

*What I have done till now*

/dev/nvme0n1p2 has the new Devuan installation
/dev/nvme0n1p4 has the old Devuan installation
/dev/nvme0n1p5 is the common /home; contents of /home has been backup using rsync in /dev/sda6

*What I wish to do is this:*

I wish to combine /dev/nvme0n1p4 and /dev/nvme0n1p5 into one partition which will function as /home for /dev/nvme0n1p2.
I need some good sagacious advice on how to go about this without much fuss.

Regards,
vrgovinda