[LBo] Permanent /home partition

[Randy Kramer]

On Tuesday 06 June 2006 06:22 pm, Stefan Waidele jun. wrote:
> Randy Kramer wrote:
> > [...]
> >
> > Stefan Waidele wrote:
>  >> [...]
> >>
> >> Unix was designed to allow many people to work on one machine, even
> >> across the network (or have their homedirectory mounted across the
> >> netword from yet another machine, and I think this is where the current
> >> approach has its pros.
> >
> > Unless you're alluding to something else, the approach I'd prefer would
> > only require sharing two directories instead of one (for example:
> > /data/<user> and /config/<user>).
>
> I am not alluding anything.

Maybe alluding was not the word I wanted to use, maybe closer is "unless I'm 
overlooking something" ;-)

> You are right. Why not share two directories instead of one?

Thanks--I think so ;-)  Now if we could only convince the world. ;-)

Just to take it another step (for others reading this email), such a change is 
entirely practical--one potential approach:

   * Get organizations like the LSB to express such a transition as a goal.

   * Get application writers/maintainers to start writing/modifying their 
applications so they look for data first in /data/<user> (and their config 
in /config/<user>) before looking in /home.  (Or perhaps even better, make 
both of those configurable based on environment variables.)

   * At some point in the future (when a significant number of applications 
have made the transition described above), start deprecating the use of /home

> > [...]
> > (Was it this thread or
> > some other that pointed out that /home used to be (in some sense) /usr?)
>
> Homedirectories can be wherever. They are stored per user in /etc/passwd.
>
> Many system-accounts (e.g. pgsql) have their ~ in /var/wherever.
> Unix-programs can cope with that.

I guess I misremembered that thread--the old location was /var. (??)

> I think I will change my home to /germany/will/win/the/soccer/worldcup
>
> ;)

Good luck!  (I don't usually follow soccer--is a (the) playoff coming up soon?

Randy Kramer