Switch /home to other distribution

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hi,
I’m thinking of switching my system to Linux Mint Cinnamon. On my current system I have got separate /home (it’s encrypted).
From what I read Mint doesn’t support installing existing /home disk (or it does?).

I need some advice from you.

  1. How to easily install Mint and use my existing encrypted /home directory?

  2. My idea of solution is:

  • install clean Mint with whatever /home it offers (and without touching my encrypted /home)
  • then on running system point or change Mint’s /home to my encrypted /home

I would appreciate any help and ideas of how to do it.

2

If the concern is only with “/home”, then I would suggest:

  1. Install Mint without sharing “/home”. Just leave “/home” as part of the root file system for Mint.
  2. Make sure that “cryptsetup” is installed in Mint
  3. Create “/etc/crypttab” to be used by Mint
  4. Manually decrypt your old “/home” and see if you can mount it at “/mnt”
  5. If that all works, then check ownership and permissions on the mounted file system;
  6. If all looks good, edit “/etc/fstab” so that on next boot, your old “/home” will be mounted at “/home”.
  7. Reboot. Be prepared to login at command line as root if you run into problems.
3

Thanks,

and what about usermod command?
Will this work?

usermod -m -d /newhome/username username

or manual changing?

/etc/default/useradd
4

You have to make sure that the user ‘username’ has the same numeric ID, and groups+ID as the user has on openSUSE. IIRC Mint uses the username for both owner and group, so you’d have to address that somehow.

5

Cinnaman is also available for opensuse, you can always try it then decide