Solved possible to have separate home on other HDD?

xchris

xchris

as of the subject, I m trying to have the /usr/home on a HDD , but the installer refuses to do this, 'can't mount /mnt/usr/home' etc , I may read outdated information anyway... unless this applies only to ZFS setup not UFS2 .. thanks
 
Of course it's possible. My /home/ is also serparated from system's disk. Makes sense.
ufs2 seem a bit exotic for FreeBSD to me(?); common fs are freebsd-ufs, or zfs.
I'm not quite sure yet, but you shall be able to do manual partitioning, and setting mount-points in the installer
See Figure 19 "Manually Create Partitions" in HB
(just watch out not to kill anything else, what's already installed and shall not be overwritten; ensure you get the right disk and partition.)

However another way is you may install it "default/normally".
Afterwards configure the partition for your /home and set the mountpoint to it.
 
UFS2: is what everyone else just calls UFS. But it is technically correct at least historically.
But yes one can easily have home directories on a different device.
Roughly (do things as root)
insert new device into system
partition new device, gpart type freebsd-ufs, label partition if you want
as root you need to newfs the partition on the new device
If you have existing /usr/home then tmp mount the new filesystem somewhere
copy all existing data from old /usr/home to tmp mount /usr/home
if existing /usr/home is a separate partition (check /etc/fstab), umount it
umount the tmp mount
Add entry to /etc/fstab for the new partition
mount /usr/home
 
I should mention this is fresh install via the USB image (14.1) there is no FreeBSD system on this PC.
It seems the FreeBSD installer has issues there, or I misunderstood something, I completely nuked the 2nd disk (HDD) created it as GPT and set a partition os freebsd-ufs , with mount point /usr/home. The full error is:
Error mounting partition /mnt/usr/home mount: /dev/ada0p1: No such file or directory.

like I can see the disks before that error then the installer can't even find them.??. ok weird
 
ok I think there is a bug there, I chose 'automatic' UFS then tried manually to change the home, that did not work! It worked only when I went again to the start of the installation and chose 'manual' install ...
 
Okay. Easy.
Since the machine is blank (nothing else on it; Windows?, Linux?, any data to lose?)
you cannot toast anything, and go easy on it.
That's very good!

Good time to play, experiment, learn, try, find out,... until you got your setup.

/dev/ada0p1 is the first partition p1 on the first (detected) HDD ada0 as in GPT (MBR would be s1).
If you want /home/ to be on another drive you should at least see two devices:
ada0 and ada1, if there are two drives installed

On one (e.g. ada0) you put your efi, boot, /, and swap-partition (just use what the installer suggests by default, it's okay, at least for the beginning.)

Within the partition manager (as I linked the HB above)
you create another partition on ada1 -> ada1p1, set it to freebsd-ufs (thanks for clearing that up btw, mer), the size you wish, and the mountpoint to /home.

Otherwise you may procede as mer explained, to configure and switch to another disk for /home afterwards.
 
thanks folks, it worked when I started again the installation, but this time as 'manually' , if you start as automatic then make changes does not quite work, I am not sure if this is a bug, but the installer is not quite 'flexible' (btw if you go to Modify a parition, there are no Options anymore... , this option is only avail on the Create option..
as for nuking the partitions, 3 backups of everything ... heh RIP Rocky linux LOL
 
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One core pro of FreeBSD is that at least within "quarterly" which I recommend, everything all together comes within a consistent package-deal.
So, always ensure your system and userland is consistent.

In detail that means:
Do a freebsd-update (see HB for details - it's no rocketscience),
then a pkg update, so your userland is on the newest version, too.

Normally under FreeBSD when it's all on the recent version, almost everything runs smoothly.
Otherwise, if a new update was just released, wait a couple of days, until every package is compiled to new version, (Which in this case is not the point, since the last update has happened a couple of days ago.)
If this not helps, compile it your own within the ports (VirtualBox is such a candidate)
And if this not helps, try look for some alternative.
There are some other direct-opus-like fm available (I had an A2000 myself, and comprehend, why you like it), but I forgot the name, since I have no fm installed anymore... - but that's another story :cool:)

Anyhow you will have to face the fact to have to do some things different.
After all you are on another system now. :cool:
But it will pay, and it's worth the effort.
I'm using FreeBSD now for over 4 years exclusively - nope. No Windows, no Linux, FreeBSD only.
Works fine for me.

P.S.: If you need another fm you may check out: Filerunner, Sunflower, and Catseye (were the last ones, I used)
 
xchris said:
ok I think there is a bug there, I chose 'automatic' UFS then tried manually to change the home, that did not work! It worked only when I went again to the start of the installation and chose 'manual' install ...
Click to expand...
Not a bug. I can't reproduce your described issue.

Installed (in a VM) 14.1-RELEASE from the "Partitioning" menu, "Auto (UFS), /usr/home on second disk without problems.

Auto (UFS) -> "entire disk" -> chose second disk -> "Create".

No problems on 13.3-RELEASE either.

xchris said:
It seems the FreeBSD installer has issues there, or I misunderstood something, I completely nuked the 2nd disk (HDD) created it as GPT and set a partition os freebsd-ufs , with mount point /usr/home. The full error is:
Error mounting partition /mnt/usr/home mount: /dev/ada0p1: No such file or directory.
Click to expand...
Assuming it's not a typo, if the home directory should be on second disk, the device name should be ada1p1 not ada0p1.

Probably you messed something up in the partition editor.



Side not: /usr/home isn't created beginning with 14.1 anymore in favor to /home.

Before 14.1 /usr/home has a softlink on target dir /home.

On ZFS before 14.1, home is a zroot/usr/home dataset, mount point /usr/home, softllinked /home, since 14.1 it's zroot/home, mount point /home.

When adduser(8), the users home directory defaults to /home/<user>, eventually you need to create a adduser configuration file to set /usr/home as default: adduser -C
 
> A2000 myself

my A600/020 says hello :-}
I like worker , not because looks like 'directory-opus' is really fast on file transfers!

> I'm using FreeBSD now for over 4 years exclusively

I was on FreeBSD a couple of years ago, alas that system was not quite compatible (sound cracking etc..) so I had to go back to Linux , but in the meanwhile I ve lost my FreeBSD scripts so... back to point one heh
 
> Probably you messed something up in the partition editor.

nope !! The 1st one is an NVMe (/dev/nad0)
 
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