Where do user files go these days?

Polytropon freebsd at edvax.de
Sun Nov 9 02:50:13 UTC 2014


On Sat, 08 Nov 2014 21:37:31 -0500, T. Michael Sommers wrote:
> I've noticed that neither the instructions for partitioning a disk in 
> the handbook, nor hier(7), mention a /home partition.  Is such a 
> partition still used?  If not, where do user files go?

It _can_ be used. Traditionally, /home is a symlink
to /usr/home, so if you create partitions according
to OS functionality, the users' data will be stored
on the /usr partition. But you are completely free
to create a dedicated /home partition - on the same
disk or even on a different disk; if you put every-
thing into one big partition, this will also work.
The installer will automatically create the symlink
as /home@ -> /usr/home for you. Just make sure that
/home exists and is either the correct mount point
or a symlink to the actual location (for example
/home@ -> /export/home, where /export is the
mountpoint for a "shared disk"). Basically, you
can create _any_ partitions you like and add a
mountpoint for them; /home is not an exception,
it's just a "special case" as its presence is
expected by many user-run programs.

You can configure those things as you like. Here is
an example (trimmed):

	% mount
	/dev/ad4s1a on / (ufs, local)
	/dev/ad4s1d on /tmp (ufs, local, soft-updates)
	/dev/ad4s1e on /var (ufs, local, soft-updates)
	/dev/ad4s1f on /usr (ufs, local, soft-updates)
	/dev/ad4s1g on /opt (ufs, local, soft-updates)
	/dev/ad6 on /home (ufs, local, soft-updates)

Similarly, /home could have been /dev/ad4s1f, or even
part of /dev/ads1e (which is /usr).


-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...


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