I have RH9, went with the default partitions. I think they are swap, /, and /boot with nothing more.

I recently deleted a windows partition on a second drive with about 10 GB space. I would like to know how I go about setting my /home to that new partition.

Step by step would be helpful

Do i copy files first then do something with the mount?

Thanks

Have a look at Partitioning in action: Moving /home and let me know if it worked

Well it worked...pretty much.

I followed the steps ok until I got to step 6 where the instructions read if you have /home in a dedicated partition already follow step 6a otherwise follow step 6b. Well I needed step 6b, however it is not labeled anywhere, nor do the links go to step 6b. So I had to figure out where in the middle of step 6a that 6b started. I'm pretty sure I guessed wrong (I started at Then, unmount and remount the new partition: ) I did that then exited single user mode then tried to follow the remaining steps and when I tried mv /home /home.old I was greeted with an error about the partition already being used or something.

My /home does work now on the new partition, however I'm not really sure "where" the original copy of /home files are. I did not have a chance to delete them, because I can no longer access them. I don't know where they are.

So thanks for the help. If anyone can tell me where my original /home files are, I would appreciate that so they don't just sit there eating up disk space.


Thanks again

More than likely, it's still on your original partition. When you mount a filesystem onto a pre-existing directory, the new mount takes precedence. Here's an example to illustrate what I'm getting at...

Suppose I have a directory layout like this:
Now, let's say I have a floppy with this structure:
If I were to execute: mount /dev/fd0 /home/me/mnt/floppy
I would get this structure:
The point is test-dir gets replaced by the contents of the floppy. When I unmount the floppy, test-dir will "reappear". I'm guessing that since you modified your fstab, that your new home partition is automatically mounted over your original /home, and is hiding the backup files you made. You could probably access it by unmounting your new home partition, and then examining the /home directory.

As a side note, whenever I want to move a filesystem, I usually boot off a rescue disc (like Knoppix) to prevent any user or system activity from interfering with the move, and then it's simply a straight copy from location A to location B, editing the fstab appropriately, and rebooting... No worse than going into single user mode in my opinion.

I tried umount /home however the error reads device is busy.
I do not have any open windows of home so i am not sure how to proceed

Personally, I would use a distro like Knoppix, or some other sort of rescue-type of distro. If that's not an option, then I would suggest trying to boot into single-user mode again.

I'm absolutely positive you would be able to examine all of your partitions using Knoppix without running into any "in use" trouble. I'm not absolutely positive about single-user mode though. It can't hurt to try.

would going into runlevel 3 ($ init 3) ve the same as going into single user mode?

Single-user mode is usually runlevel 1 ($ init 1)

Runlevel 3 typically set up to be a fully functional system running in command-line only

Runlevel 5 is tyically the exact same as 3 with the exception that X is started up automatically.

Each system can define how the runlevels behave, but those are the "normal" settings.

Found this in the man pages: