Installer created seperate Home partition

Hi

I am new to OPENSuSe and I must say I think it’s real slick!

I just installed and the way I have my PC set-up, I have a 250Gb primary hard disk and a 1TB secondary hard-disk. I always save docs to the secondary disk

As WIndoze is such a hog, I have given that 200Gb on the primary and Linux 50GB which has always been more than enough

When I went through the installer, it correctly identified the 50GB partition and I told it to overwrite that one

What the installer has done is to create a separate partition for the system files and one for the home folder

Now conceptually, I think that’s great and really helpful and I understand the logic completely. In my case though, it’s not something I wanted as I have my 1TB disk for all docs

Was there an option I should have selected at Install time to ensure everything went on the 50GB partition?
If so should I run the installer again or is there something I can do now to merge the partitions…I see they have different file systems so suspect that would be awkward!

Grateful for your thoughts

Cheers
R

Yes, the installer creates a separate /home partition by default.
In earlier versions there was an explicit checkbox for that.
It should still be there I think, but it’s probably hidden behind the “Modify suggested Partition” (or similar) button.

If so should I run the installer again or is there something I can do now to merge the partitions…I see they have different file systems so suspect hat would be awkward!

Just remove the entry for /home in /etc/fstab, and the folder /home on the root partition will be used instead.
You should probably copy over the contents of the /home partition too, for that, just mount it and copy it, e.g. log in as root in text mode and run something like this:

mount /dev/sdb3 /mnt
cp -aR /mnt /home

You should then also be able to repartition your hard disk with YaST->Partitioner, or other programs like gparted or partitionmanager (as long as the partitions to be modified are not mounted).

You don’t need a separate home partition and you have complete control of the install so could have changed it. You need to pay attention to the partition scheme the installer presents before committing to the scheme and change it if not what you want.

So the installer presented it s default scheme and you accepted it instead of changing it to your liking.

Note it is fine to use a drive as a common document container and I assume it has a Windows file system. Which again is ok but remember that Windows and Linux file system are different and Windows does not carry the permission bits that are in Linux. When you mount a Windows file system it is given synthetic permission which are not saved. You should thus never ever use such a partition as your home because Linux expects a real Linux files system there. You can mount your DOC partition at a mount point in your home but can can not be used as a home partition.

So in my opinion you should not worry too much about having a separate home. Just don;t try to mount a Windows partition as a home partition. That will lead to problems

If you want to re-install (When I’m becoming acquainted with a new OS, I frequently tear down and re-install several times until I get all things exactly as I want them),

During the install, you’ll be prompted whether to accept a default proposed layout. Yes, it might be easy to overlook. The next step is setting your Date/Time (primarily time zone). If you go this far, then hit the “back” button to modify your partitions.

You need to click “Edit” to modify the existing proposed layout and then it’s simply unchecking a box to install everything on the same partition. You’ll also see a few other options you can change like whether to stay with BTRFS or choose something else.

You can also click the other button to start from scratch building your own layout. You’ll see the standard Partitioner app.
It was a very long time after my initial installs before I started building some machines with a completely custom partition from scratch… You need some knowledge about what is needed and what is optional before you pursue this path because there is no guidance.

HTH,
TSU

Many thanks for the advice

Yes I “accepted” a default that I did not know I needed to be aware of in the first place. No other distro I mentioned does this. Don’t get me wrong…I think it’s a very thoughtful and helpful innovation

My only concern was around whether I would run out of disk space, but as I was at an early stage. I just re-installed on to one partition

Another bit of feedback, I wanted to automount my second hard disk without editing FSTAB as I have experienced problems with that in the past. After some Googling, I downloaded the Ubuntu “disks” utility which provided an easy GUI way to do this without risking mistakes on the FSTAB file. I also remember a while back when I was using Mint that the first time I accessed the secondary hard disk, it asked me if I would like to automount it next time and I said yes and the job was done. So might be worth seeing if that sort of thing can be a useful addition to SuSE

Finally, I have since customised my desktop more and I think this will be my new long-term distro - it’s slick and solid!
Hoping to see more plasma 5 widgets converted - the 2 I am waiting on are “Play Wolf” and the digital picture frame

Very happy with this distro

“disks” is included in openSUSE too, the package is called “gnome-disk-utility”.

I also remember a while back when I was using Mint that the first time I accessed the secondary hard disk, it asked me if I would like to automount it next time and I said yes and the job was done. So might be worth seeing if that sort of thing can be a useful addition to SuSE

That would sound like it should be done by the desktop environment.
Plasma5 doesn’t support automounting yet, but it is planned to be reintroduced in 5.5.
No idea about others.

Btw, you can also use YaST->System->Partitioner to mount partitions, this will create an entry in fstab for you.

Finally, I have since customised my desktop more and I think this will be my new long-term distro - it’s slick and solid!
Hoping to see more plasma 5 widgets converted - the 2 I am waiting on are “Play Wolf” and the digital picture frame

At least for “Play Wolf” there’s a “replacement” shipped with Plasma5, there’s a media player applet in the system tray, similar to the old KDE4 “Now playing” plasmoid.
Not exactly the same, but it should be good enough for now.