The following steps explain how to move your home folder to its own partition  in order to keep your settings after reinstalling Zenwalk (root permissions required).

Please be carefull and backup your important data!!!

1. Create a new partition or use an existing one which is still unused (no FAT or NTFS partitions as they don't support file permissions). Partitions can be created using cfdisk.  It doesn't matter whether it is a primary or an extendend partition. Afterwards I would recommend a reboot.

2. Your new partition needs a filesystem. According to your preferences use mkfs.ext3 or mkfs.xfs.




Please be aware that you will loose your data if you choose the wrong device! Be carefull and recheck devices! (??? is your target partition)

3. Mount the new partition. Create a folder in /mnt. e.g. mkdir /mnt/newhome. Then do:



4. Now you are ready to copy (not move) your data. No files should be open, so do this step in single user mode. You can get there by:



Login

Go to /home and copy your data with:



6. Move your old /home folder:



Create a new home folder:



Leave single user mode.



Login



7. Edit /etc/fstab according to your filesystem.



8. If you are sure that everthing went right, you can remove your old home folder. Or keep it in place as long as you are sure that everything works fine.

Good Luck,

JustusJonas

Would this also work if you had multiple linux distros on one drive? As in, would both distros be able to share the same /home directory?

That depends on your UID (user ID). That should be the same for every distro then, that could be tricky.

Right, I see...

Well, what if it is the same. This UID is just your username, right? Or is it more?

It is nummerical value of user's ID.
You can see this value using as root:

-> list users

or

as root:

the third value is uid

It's not only the uid/gid that's different!
Btw. you get all your uid/gid info with 'id'

I put in the same login name for all installations but diffrent home directories
in /etc/passwd and linked my mail/browser/sound/media directories.

This way, i can login with my standard account name and have all important
directories (mail!!!) only once.

til

I do things slightly differently because some of the XFCE settings don't migrate smoothly.  Instead of having a /home partition, I like to keep my settings in a place that gets backed up regularly and then I link to my settings from my home directory. 

For instance, I link to

• .mozilla
• .azureus
• .gftp
• .thunderbird
• .gaim
• .macromedia
• .ssh

This way I can keep the settings that stay the same and I can wipe out /home if it is convenient.

By the way, I don't keep my files in /home.  I created my own non-standard partition (/data) so that I have a place to keep my files that is not the default target of any install script.

PS
I wish NTFS could symlink

Update

My script:


Remember to leave spaces (and underscores) out of your script's name!

You must run this script in ~/.

Obviously you will have to change the script to point to the copies of your settings. 

To run the script:

you can create symlinks

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Junction.html

cheers
til

Currently my root partition takes up my whole hd. Is there a way to make a home partition without having to reinstall?

What type is your partition?  (Ext 2, Ext 3, Reiser, XFS; other.)

Use GParted to shrink your partition. Then put another (logical) partition in the free space for home.

Do I need to run this under GNOME?

GParted is available for plain Zenwalk - but I was thinking that you'd probably want to download the GParted package you see on distrowatch and burn it to a CD-ROM ... and keep the CD-ROM for future situations.

Best regards,
Claus