Heya folks, some people online told me I was doing partitions wrong, but I’ve been doing it this way for years. Since I’ve been doing it for years, I could be doing it in an outdated way, so I thought I should ask.
I have separate partitions for EFI, /, swap, and /home. Am I doing it wrong? Here’s how my partition table looks like:
- FAT32: EFI
- BTRFS:
/ - Swap: Swap
- Ext4:
/home
I set it up this way so that if I need to reinstall Linux, I can just overwrite / while preserving /home and just keep working after a new install with very few hiccups. Someone told me there’s no reason to use multiple partitions, but several times I have needed to reinstall the OS (Linux Mint) while preserving /home so this advice makes zero sense for me. But maybe it was just explained to me wrong and I really am doing it in an outdated way. I’d like to read what you say about this though.
Shrug. To me this is like arguing over how to fold your underwear.
Why would you put home on ext4 instead of btrfs?
It’s not wrong, as such, but simply not right. Since you’re using btrfs, having a separate partition for home makes little sense. I, personally, also prefer using a swapfile to a swap partition, but that’s potato/potato.
Alright, but actually I don’t think I’m maximizing my use of btrfs. I only use btrfs because of its compatibility with Linux Mint’s Timeshift tool. Would you be implying if I used btrfs for the whole partition, I can reinstall / without overwriting /home?
BTRFS has a concept called a subvolume. You are allowed to mount it just like any other device. This is an example /etc/fstab I’ve copied from somewhere some time ago.
UUID=49DD-6B6F /efi vfat defaults 0 2
UUID=701c73d7-58b5-4f90-b205-0bb56a8f1d96 / btrfs subvol=@root 0 0
UUID=701c73d7-58b5-4f90-b205-0bb56a8f1d96 /home btrfs subvol=@home 0 0
UUID=701c73d7-58b5-4f90-b205-0bb56a8f1d96 /opt btrfs subvol=@opt 0 0
UUID=701c73d7-58b5-4f90-b205-0bb56a8f1d96 /srv btrfs subvol=@srv 0 0
UUID=701c73d7-58b5-4f90-b205-0bb56a8f1d96 /var btrfs subvol=@var 0 0
/efi (or /boot, or /boot/efi, whatever floats your boat) still has to be a separate vfat partition, but all the other mounts are, technically speaking, the same partition mounted many times with a different subvolume set as the target.
Obviously, you don’t need to have all of them separated like this, but it allows you to fine tune the parts of system that do get snapshot.
How about when I need to reinstall the OS? Will overwriting / not touch /home like with my current set up?
Also, if I don’t indicate a swap partition during install, would the OS use swap files automatically?
I think the last time I installed Mint (21.2) it DID create a swapfile. Don’t use it, so commented that out in /ETC/FSTAB.
It’s a good way to do it for your use case.
It’s not outdated, just less necessary now. With SSD’s, you can just copy your /home back from your daily backup after reinstallation, which takes all of 5 minutes.
OpenSUSE (and probably some other distros) have it built-in, you just have to activate it. If yours doesn’t, you have to install a program that does it or configure one manually.
I have daily backups for brtfs but for my / only via Linux Mint’s Timeshift. I do manual backups for some of my home folders every week. I take it the backups you mention would be lost over a reinstall?
How long that takes depends entirely on the size of your home, the number of files in there and how you store your backups.Not everyone has tiny home directories.
