I am running cinnamon mint 21.1 on a 500 GB SSD. Everything is on 1 disk. I am in the process of moving /home to a new 2TB SSD but it has had some sticky spots here and there. Specifically, I formatted the new disk (I go by uuid in my fstab, but I will refer to this disk moving forward as "2TB-sdf") 2TB-sdf to ext4, and used rsync to copy /home to this disk. There was some weird behavior, taking up more (way more) space on the target than from the source - but I don't even want to go down that rabbit hole...

Ok, maybe I'll go down that rabbit hole just a little, for context: So my system disk, sda, where root lives, is 500 GB. 100 GB is for root. I think 50 GB is raw / swap and 350 GB is /home. Running rsync my 2TB-sdf ends up 38% full. Doing a bit of math, that translates to 760 GB. Of space. Used to backup a 500 GB disk. Only 350 GB of which is being backed up even. And this is AFTER I modified the rsync operation to limit it's scope. I think if I hadn't it would have just kept writing forever.

In any case, this was probably the first sign that I didn't reeeally know exactly what I was doing. For the record I, did some searches, it looks like this is an issue, has been for a while, like years and years, and I never did see a good explanation for the phenomenon. But like I said - rabbit hole, not interested. I got out of that tar pit by running "sudo rsync -aiXS --exclude='timeshift' /home/. /mnt/newHome/." just on a hunch, cuz it seemed to be going nuts with the timeshift files, and that modification worked out well.

The next big issue, where I screwed up, was formatting 2TB-sdf to ext4, but not PARTITIONING the disk! And this seems to be a mistake that I cannot backtrack out of. I'm pretty certain I'm just going to have to wipe the disk and start again. So Here is my plan of how to do this:

ctrl+alt+F2 to get into TTY window? environment? (idk)

#format 2TB-sdf, and give it a primary partition = sdf1
sudo fdisk /dev/sdf
(m)enu -> (n)ew part -> (p)rimary -> 1 (part 1) ret, ret, -> (w)rite

sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdf1

#make a mount point for it, and mount it
sudo mkdir /mnt/home_temp

sudo mount /dev/sdf1 /mnt/home_temp

#replicate my home partition, minus timeshift because it breaks things
sudo rsync -aiXS --exclude='timeshift' /home/. /mnt/home_temp

[!!!!! first question = should I be using "/home/*" instead of "/home/." ???]

#rename "home" to free up the label
sudo mv /home /home_orig

sudo mkdir /home

#unmount my original "home" partition
sudo unmount /dev/sdf1

#mount sdf1 at "home"
sudo mount /dev/sdf1 /home

#change fstab (I already have it backedup, and updated too, saved as #"fstab_new", so I just need to ^O, save under different name, y, etc...
#but I may need to see if the uuid is different after the reformat, either way
cd /
cd etc
sudo nano fstab


So that's my new plan. And my one final question is: do I still need to mess around with the 'usermod' command if I do it this way? That too, I am unclear on.

Thanks guys and gals, so much, for the guidance, if you can help. Thanks!

I would, partition & put a filesystem on it, then mount & chown the partition, then copy all your home files to it, put the new disk into fstab as your home, edit out your original home partition, then reboot to see that it uses the new home partition. Hopefully, it will just work.

(Then you can decide what to do with the original partition.)

2 drives
boot drive 1 with OS and Home
log in root to stay out of home
prepare 2nd drive with a partition or the entire drive add /home directory
#mount /mnt/home in the cli or whatever it easiest for you
copy old home into new home
#su username
for both hidden and nonhidden
$cp -xav /home/.* /home/* /mnt/home
$exit
to keep old home you can mv /home /home-old so you can mount it later if need be to compare then deletes its contents or whatever pleases you.
#edit fstab with new source detestation
save exit
#umount /mnt/home
mount all
#mount -a
check and change permissions if needed
logout of root and into user
done

if you don't have root, oh well, blame the distro for not allowing you to be the Linux man you're suppose to be.

side note: I'd get rid of swap to regain usable space

Do you have a separate drive/partition for timeshift or are you writing everything to one disk? Without changing timeshift you would still be writing backups to your /home which would be the new drive?

With home on a separate drive the actual /home directory is still on root (/) but each user's directory including timeshift without changing would now be on /dev/sdf1. It would be better to have backups on a separate /drive/partition separate from the operating system.

Moving everything using cp might be easier verus rsync.

Time shift is written to... yeah, "/home/timeshift". Everything is written to the system disk. And the only partitions are "root" "home" and "raw/swap or undefined" whatever it's called. icr.


Hmm. I'm not sure. That's kind of one of the aspects I don't understand. That's why I was asking about 'usermod' and the transfer of permissions and ownerships. Because, my semi-understanding is that, you can assign, or designate, a home partition, but there might be places, system elements and such that are pointing to paths, old paths... I don't know. I was considering disabling timeshift, since it was giving me issues already. Just moving the 'timeshift' directory somewhere safe, but I don't have any other ext2/3/4 storage space. This is the first Linux system I've ever used. I'm barely 2 months in!


Ok, this just confuses me.

This sounds more like what I'm expecting.

Yeah, absolutely. This is one of the intended outcomes from all this.

You think so? What about -X for extended permissions? (idek what that means, honestly) or -o (preserve owner), -E (preserve executability? I have a wine prefix that runs ableton live in /home for example) ... The man page is very extensive for rsync, and, to me, it sounds like I need many of these options. Any thoughts on that? P.s. I do NOT want to screw this up. I've broken my system a few times already - once or twice irreparably. And I was actually fine with that. But there has been a fair amount of configuration etc invested at this point. If I can avoid the hassle, I would prefer to.

linux does not have separate drive designation like Windows C:, D: etc. You did post that you had separate partitions for /(root), /home and maybe swap. The analogy is a tree where the trunk is the root partition. Mount points are designated directories on the "trunk" where other drives/partitions are attached.

Moving home is only moving the sub-directories below home i.e. username/ timeshift/ etc but not the actual /home directory. You can mount another filesystem to a directory that contains data with it essentially being "on top".
As posted you can move the old home and if the new partition works you can eventually delete it.

Copying with the --preserve=all option AFAIK should cover everything.

Depending on if you actually ran the rsync command more then once and how the specific command syntax used you could of possibly copied everything twice so it might be possible that you actually did have 38% used.

I take it this is not 'sudo'... something else? Perhaps I could/ should be doing this from a live USB?


This is where I (think that I) screwed up in the first place: no partition, just entire drive in ext4
Because, if I can just assign "/home" to the entire disk, then I'm already at the finish line.

It's a bit murky for me though, tbh. I have done 'mount points', fstab, automount, etc successfully.
And at this point I know enough to know that directories, partitions, and (what I will call) "official Linux partitions",
like root, usr, opt, home, and so on... they are NOT your everyday average partition. They are like, immutable, and
the OS takes them seriously, and has a planned use for them. And unlike "/home" the directory, or mount point, which you can have on every single disk
if you'd like. The "home" partition... there can be only one.

#mount /mnt/home in the cli or whatever it easiest for you
copy old home into new home


ok. 'setup user'? 'switch user'? or is this a command? like 'super user? as in "su myUserName"?


-x one file system (this keeps it as a 'unified file sys' i suppose?)
-a archive (is this going to ensure that permission and ownership wont get screwed up?)
-v verbose, got it.

/* and /. - this I did not do when I went through with rsync. This is actually necessary though?



Where should I be exiting from, exactly? TTY or... idk. I'm not even sure I have a decent guess.


and here we have a "Linux-move", aka re-name. Yes?


Totally lost me here. Is this out of order/ typo? By any chance? Or am I legitimately not getting the picture?

ooooh. eh. Check: how? Change: chmod? or usermod? annnd... how?
(hahaha. I'm sorry, man, for asking so many questions. Seriously, I feel kinda bad... but..)


Yeah, again. I'm not sure if I have or haven't done this, or am doing this right this very second.
I, like a noob kook probably, do everything out of one account. "My" account.
Then again, I have to 'sudo' from time to time, so possibly I am not, in fact, 'root'. It is
beginning to look like, I may not be aware of whether or not I am.

Yeah, I may just be all but a 'linux boy'. Time will tell. But I can tell you this much: 2 months in, and I'd sooner die a 'linux boy',
than live my life as a 'windows man'. lol

Yeah, I can think about that later. I was debating this, not sure. The space isn't an issue so much. And "do I really need swap with 64 GB RAM",
but 64 GB maybe isn't all that much anymore. Idk. What I can say is that I'm basically certain that Linux, so far, has never crashed on me. ever.
Only issues have come from Brave, freezing, or having some weird thing where a bug affects the mouse cursor, it "picks up" an object and won't let go. forces a reset. Only brave-browser has been a (fairly big) piece of shit, at times. Everything else has been out of this world terrific.



Thanks by the way, for your time. If you don't have the 4 or 5 free hours, to answer my encyclopedia of questions, I'll understand and not hold it against you btw. You tried. kek

So, this implies a drive-wiping, correct? Because I can't add a partition after the fact. Or I can, but it's gonna mean, creating and growing and shrinking volumes, and then moving from the first partition to the second? I'll just bite the bullet and start fresh if I have to. That doesn't bother me really.

It's the chown, I chown what? the "sdf" or the uuid? or the "mount point"? Or is it meant (necessary / imperative) to be unmounted for this to take place?

Also, I really apologize for all these low-test, beta-male questions here. I swear this is not some symptom of laziness on my part. It's just an abundance of caution, due to circumstance that I don't know what the hell I'm doing, in this department in particular. As evidenced by the 2 or 3 times I nuked my system, to death, in the recent past. Those episodes were all, essentially, related to this kind of thing: partitions, resizing volumes, some other thing with fstab or a change to... res... divin.. some package manager. not snapd. some other thing. maybe. I never quite figured out the cause. tbh.

Alright, very funny. I see what you did here.
After some homework, I figured out that 'root' always has a UID of "0" (zero). And my UID is 1,000. I think, been a few hours. It definitely
isn't zero. And that's because cinnamon mint, mint, and all things ubuntu don't grant us users root. Other than 'super user', but I guess it
just isn't the same thing. Too bad, but at least now I know.

haha Yeah , after I installed Ubuntu on a partition the first thing I did was give root a password,

sudo passwd root enter a password

I don't know what login manager that uses to mod it to allow you to login as root to give it a desktop and you can stay off of your home, but if home is in root / partition, meaning you did not separate it at all. then its a different method of doing this.

just login user

[(disclaimer as far as your time whatever back stuff I have no idea. I'd burn it then set it back up and do another backup if I actually used it which I do not, to me it just takes up space, and with my home split I just do a script to back up my homes whenever I make a change in them, or whenever i feel like it. )]

login user
make a home directory on your 2nd drive.

open a terminal

mount 2nd drive /mnt/

sudo mkdir -pv /mnt/home/userName

sudo chown userName:Primarygroup /mnt/home/userName

( you are in your home user dir in a terminal)

cp -xav . /mnt/home/userName

edit fstab to change your mount point to your new home

this is the tricky part because if your home is in root partition it is going to get lost after you mount your new home, and seeings you're already mounted on it and logged into it then this is why you need to be in root so you can move /home /home-back then you should be able to find it after reboot. to delete it when you feel safe with the new home

this is why I always separate my /home from root / on two different partitions. you can also always reinstall the system and reattach the /home/user without having to back it up first because it is already separated just assign it to /home again no format. but that is getting head of this game.

how I back up my system files I want to keep and my home.
you may or may not want or need this, but it is just another way of backing up stuff you feel is important.
backup script for multiple systems
my system files file for Linux I keep in my home/bin as noted in the script like this
the file
just add to it as needed

Basically, yes, new partitioning scheme on the disk you want to use, then once it is mounted, (you can mount it on /mnt), chown of the new partition to your user, cp -a your 'oldhome' files to this new partition, make this new partition your 'home' in /etc/fstab, (change the original entry to something else or comment it out), reboot, & you should be using your 'new' home partition.

Once confirmed that you are using you new 'home', you can do what you want with the space taken up by your previous 'home'.

I got it all worked out, mostly, so thanks for the help. One final question though, that I can't seem to find an answer to. Or rather, the answers I find aren't consistent with what I'm seeing, and hence do not apply. The question is, again, about timeshift misbehaving:

I'm on the new disk, everything is working perfectly, out of the gate (thanks Linux!), and so I'm comfortable freeing up all the space on the sys disk. BUT. I want to keep my old timeshift snapshots. At least the very first, i.e. 'clean' one. But I can't copy them over, or move them. Or rsync them. Anything. They just end up, not even starting to transfer. Just in the 'preparing to move' phase, the calculated file size balloons endlessly. So I can go through the gui in timeshift, and 'relocate' the destination, but that just starts a new folder, it doesn't move the existing snapshots. Is there a way to do this? or should I just say goodbye to the clean copy I made after installation?

Warning - I know nothing about 'Timeshift' - however, most 'snapshots' are owned by 'root', so maybe you need to change to 'root' to be able to move them.