In KDE Linux, should I be able to mount a separate home partition on /home?

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1

Maybe not the best place to ask, but thought I’d try here first.

I wanted to try out the alpha KDE Linux, but when I put this:

dev/disk/by-label/home /home auto nosuid,nodev,nofail,x-gvfs-show 0 0

into fstab, the partition is NOT mounted, and there’s no related message to be seen in journalctl.

However, this non-home entry in fstab DOES work:

/dev/disk/by-label/archives /var/archives auto nosuid,nodev,nofail,x-gvfs-show 0 0

Both fstab lines are the ones I use in two other distros. Neither of those use btrfs for /.

The home partition has a ext4 filesystem, as does the archives partition.

I did NOT try using the mount command while running KDE Linux because I thought it a bad idea to pull the rug out under /home on a running system.

Is is not possible to use /home as a mount point in KDE Linux?

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Is is not possible to use /home as a mount point in KDE Linux?

Of course, I expect it’s the normal case for most distros. But KDE is a DE, not a distro. /etc/fstab is at the OS level.

Does

LABEL=home /home ext4 nosuid,nofail,nodev 0 0

work? (I’ve pruned the oddball option, and specified the type for simplicity.)

I suggest booting to a live USB, then experimenting with mount commands there. (One can make a system unbootable through errors in /etc/fstab.) For example,

$ sudo -i
# mkdir -p /mnt/home
# mount LABEL=home /mnt/home -t ext4 -o nosuid,nofail

I wonder if there’s a race condition in the set up of /dev/disk/by-label.

3

KDE Linux is using a BTRFS file system, with a subvolume mounted as /home

You’d need to umnount/remove the subvolume and modify the mounting to add a separate partition and mount it as your $HOME, but as an
“immutable” OS, this doesn’t seem immediately straightforward – my fstab here has no mount points in it, so where are these actually being defined? I haven’t bothered to look into it very deeply. The process itself would be safe enough, once the exiasting $HOME has been unmounted, and the correct files/methods involved have been determined.

Subvolumes are essentially the same thing as separate partitions in btrfs, kinda-sorta.

It may be easier to do a fresh install and use the manual partitioning to set up a separate $HOME with your preferred filesystem.

I haven’t tried replacing a subvolume with a separate partition, nor done a manual install of KDE Linux using this, as I much prefer using btrfs subvolumes instead of the ‘old’ standard of a separate partition.

4

Just my 2-cents, I often copy and paste /home and /var from backup to a new release on separate partitions. Then during install choose other but leave the nodes un-marked for format. If all else fails try to run a new install then copy and paste your /home node after the install finishes.

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KDE Linux is using a BTRFS file system, with a subvolume mounted as /home

Thank you. I thought it was just a proposal, and the name to be decided.

my fstab here has no mount points in it, so where are these actually being defined?

My understanding is that systemd manages mounting using “mount units”, and can generate them from /etc/fstab, but does not need to. See them with systemctl list-units --type=mount

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The OP here. Since no one here had a real answer, I’ve now posted my question to KDE Linux Issues.

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Hi - just for reference, KDE Linux is not in an alpha state yet: Alpha (Testing edition) · KDE Linux · GitLab

In this state, I think Nate’s advice from a few months ago still holds:

If you’re interested in contributing at this stage, the Matrix channel - #kde-linux:kde.org - may be a good place to jump in :slight_smile:

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