I need to install root on one HDD and home on another
 

I am putting a bunch of flavors on an external dual HDD enclosure. It has 2 SATA 320Gb WD HDDs in it.

I was going to put 32b OSs on one and 64 OSs on the other. Can't do it that way because it will only boot from sda.

So I figure to put the root/boot partition on sda and home on sdb. I did this very easily with Mandriva2009.

I failed completely with PCLOS and Mepis. Mepis will only do one drive as far as I can tell and PCLOS acted all right but failed to install grub and the partitions do not have everything they should have in them.

Does anyone know if there is a way to do this? I am going to try UE 64 later.

sure, there is always the manual way

use fdisk or gparted to create your partitions
install the os on /dev/sda (with /home being under the / partition and don't create any user accounts)

then edit /etc/fstab to point /dev/sdb1 to /home as such

/etc/sdb1 /home ext3 defaults 1 2

replacing ext3 with whatever filesystem you chose to format /dev/sdb1 with
then create your user accounts once you get /home mounted

frieza
WELL, and here I thought I was doing it the manual way.

I will give that a whack. UE went on with no problem. I have Hardy on too but all on sda so that I have one that in my newbyness I can trust the boot on it.

I like Ubuntu but I would like to have this setup so that people could try several at speed rather than the LiveCD.

I like your signature. I am not fluent but I could see that Vista was out of tune in comparison to 98. I had to loose Vista or have a stroke.
Note the lack of MS in my signature. It's the only box I have.

I know that people play computer games and I know that am a little elderly for that interest but - screwing around with Linux is too much fun. If I had been a gamer before Linux, I don't think I would be now.

I have never yet fooled with fstab stuff. Ah - another learning experience. "They" say that folks over 55 do not learn enough new stuff. I am just doing this for my health. Now there is a good excuse for screwing some thing else up.

By the way, I deleted all partitions on the 2 drives last night and redid them with cfdisk and flagged both as bootable hoping that would work. It did not but now I don't have any primary partitions on either drive. Much neater and more flexible.

I have had a look at the fstab file in Hardy, Mandriva and UE.

This really is neat. But.

I am pretty sure I have only got the beginings of a clue here as to what this does.

Example; I have had some problems with some installations recognizing the existing swap partitions. This one (Hardy) was put on after sda5 after I had partitioned it an sda6 (swap). Hardy does not recognize that there is any swap as shown on the system monitor that claims "0 bytes".

In UE, it recognizes both small swap partitions (almost 5Gb on sda and 3Gb on sdb) because I was bright enough to mark them as such in the partitioning part of the install process (as opposed to my usual practice of ignoring that).

The thing is that, to me, the entries in fstab look pretty much alike. Hardy does have sda6 listed twice as opposed to UE listing sda6 and sdb7.

None of the entries look much like what you are saying to do.

Hardy
UE
If you just look at the first entry for sda6 in both files, they look alike to me, yet one works and the other does not.

I think that I had better get some more education before I start messing with these files a lot. I need to check them all and what they are seeing for swap and what is there for them.

Nautilus may be a dangerous tool used this way but I will be able to see ALL the fstab files on one page in a hurry when I get the internal drives back online (I turn off every thing that is not involved when installing - I am getting pretty good at fixxing grub problems).

Any clarafication will be met with a smile.

here is how what i told you would line up in a real fstab file

that line should explain a bit
file system.. the partition or drive you want to mount
mount point.. the directory in the tree you want to mount
options, specify how you want the drive mounted (permissions, ownership etc.., havnt used this one much other then to set noauto for removable disks so they dont try to mount at boot and cause the system to stop booting)
type, what type of format is being used (ext2, ext3 etc..)
dump and pass i'm not sure exactly but they have to do with the fsck check on boot
1 1 would be the / volume
1 2 would be any other volume you want to have checked at boot
0 0 would be volumes you don't want checked at boot (suck as fat32 voluems)

hope that helps
except it looks like i typoed and put /etc/ when i meant /dev

UUID=d9991226-dde9-4f95-bc52-3a976f464f1b is just another of many ways of addressing a drive

AHH, yes this is a great help.

I have been studying too. I found that the format you are using in Mepis.

I also just got one of my drives that was not connected to the swap partition connected. This was all caused by installing SUSE 11.1 where I wanted it instead of letting it wipe out 3 in use partitions. I do not like that installer at all.

I believe that I will retry the Mepis and/or PCLOS install. With your information I should succeed or at least screw up in a more knowledgible way.

Thanks a bunch
Tom

Have a look.That might help.Short and to the point.