/usr/home vs /home

[Hendrik Hasenbein]

On 22.11.2011 11:30, "Thomas Mueller <mueller6727"@bellsouth.net wrote:
>> In the old days home was typically a separate partition that was 
>> mounted on /home.  If you didn't have a partition the installer
>> would create /usr/home and symlink /home to it.  The root was also
>> typically an independent partition, so it made sense not to clutter
>> it up with home directories.
> 
>> Now that the default behavior is to use one big partition, the 
>> installer defaults to /usr/home + symlink.
> 
>> I've always liked the more succinct /home and was wondering if
>> there is any reason why not to delete the symlink and move home to
>> / to mimic the old many partition style?
> 
>> thanks, dave c
> 
> My preference is to use the traditional /home, on a separate
> partition.  That way, user data can be kept safe in the case of a
> major upgrading or revamping of the system.
> 
> This principle is even applicable for MS-Windows, even if the
> user-data partition is not called "home".
> 
> A Linux user can run two or more distributions sharing the same /home
> with each other, but not the same /home as for FreeBSD because of
> different file system.
> 
> bsdinstall on FreeBSD 9.0-BETA1 changed my /home to a symlink to
> /usr/home, but I changed it back to my preference.
> 
> I read that PC-BSD considers /usr/home to be correct.
> 
> I agree with Martin Sugioarto <martin at sugioarto.com> on preparing the
> disks myself rather than letting the installer do it.  bsdinstall
> only made things more difficult for partitioning the disk, not
> allowing enough space, and also bsdinstall's boot partition was
> nonfunctional for me.
> 
> But I don't see any advantage to putting /, /usr, and /var on
> separate partitions.

This might not be an universal advantage, but it is good to keep the
choice. For example / could reside on a small flash memory built-in on
the mainboard. /usr and /homes are mounted from different fileservers
and /var is on a usb flash drive inside the case, because / is already
filled.

mata ne,
Hendrik

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