Ive been thinking, if I had a separate /root and separate /home/user partition, then everytime I went to do an upgrade/install, I would lose everything that was saved in the /home/user partition. Is this feasible?

/root isn't supposed to be seperate. If you want to share /home with different distros, make sure the user id numbers are the same to avoid permission problems.

Well, what I was thinking was a separate /home partition from my Mandrake partition, that way when I upgrade Mandrake or mess with it, I dont lose whatever is saved in the /home folder. Does that make sense?

It does. Just make sure your user has the same number it had before when you reinstall.

aaa - I'm confused about your post. I agree that if you were trying to share /home across different distros you could run into problems, but Kramer seems to be asking whether upgrading (ie, going from ver 8 to ver 9 of the distro, or installing additional packages manually) would have a negative impact on the contents of /home. I'd say No, they're totally independent issues. In other words, upgrading to a newer version, or installing additional software will not have any effect on the users, nor would it do anything harmful to /home. Similarly, I don't see any real harm in giving /root its own partition, if that was your desire. What downside would there be in doing this? I've learned a lot from your posts and thus I want to better understand your recommendations in this situation. -- J.W.

The reason the root dir should be part of the main partition is the same reason essential programs are kept in /bin & /sbin (and not in /usr/bin ...); they are essential to the system. It's why there is no /home/root. Root should be independent of what happens to other stuff. If something happens to one of the other partitions (say the /home), you can still boot as root in single-user mode normally.

I don't know if upgrading will change the uid number, but with a reinstall this is quite likely. Every user has a number, and the name is just for show. Stuff like ownership is determined by the uid number, not the username. If you do something a little as create users in a different order, the numbers will be different. Or the new Mandrake may assign numbers in a different order. If you want the old files to still belong to you, you need to make sure you use the same uid number.

I think the confusion's coming from his saying '/root' when I think he meant '/(root)'. Yeah, /root has to be part of /. But / can easily do without /home. I think he wants

/dev/hdxN /
/dev/hdxN /home

not

/
/root
/home

"Need" is rather a strong word. You could always chown the user's directory if it ends up with a different uid.

Let's distinguish between "/" and "/root". I clearly understand that / contains the essential programs, and that there's a significant benefit to having / live on one partition and /home on another. However, to use an analogy: /root is to the root user as /home/<user> is to a regular user, right? As such, just like any mountpoint, you could create a separate partition for it if you wanted to. I don't see that there would be any meaningful downside to putting /root on its own partition - am I missing obvious drawbacks?

As for the UID, Yes, I see your point. Thanks for any input -- J.W.

I guess I would have been better off saying / and /home rather than /root. / and /home would have probably been more appropriate.

I can't see any problems. Even if the drive containing /root becomes corrupted, the system should fall back on using / for /root. Home directories don't contain any files that make or break system-wide settings.

/ = root partition.
/boot = boot partition = boot directory.
/root = user root's home directory on the root partiotion.

yes, yes YES!

It is a *very* good idea to have a seperate /home partition.
/home and
/ partitions are the bare minimum.

billy