Two into One

[Les.]

Hi all, long time no speak, but a bit of advice would be appreciated.

After a few hardware problems, I have just installed Linux Mint 18.3 Cinamon 64bit. Courtesy of Dave, I now have a 60GB solid state drive, so my idea was to use that for OS, and a second spinner of 250GB where I want to keep my documents.

I was hoping to get HOME containing this drive somehow, but it appears as a separate drive, and navigating to a folder to for example save a new document is a real PITA. I had previously tried without success, so this install had the “data” drive still with documents on it (but backed up expecting it to be blanked) so it was already one continuous Ext 4 formatted space. See screenshot.

On the previous trial I had tried dragging the various folders (Pictures, Videos etc) across, but could no do anything, other than have similar folders (Pictures, Videos etc.) over on “Data” drive with the info copied there and a PITA to navigate to.

Surely an easy way?

Les

[Les.]

I had better try the screenshot again. Les.

[Ed P]

I’m not certain I really understand your problem. Try right-clicking on any folder you have copied to your data drive.  You should see an option to ‘make link’. Click on that, and you can now drag this ‘link to’ to wherever you want to have it. If you right-click on this link you can also rename it to whatever pleases you. You can of course delete this link if you put it in the wrong place.

[Les.]

Ed, neat idea, but no “make link” available with a right click.

Les.

[Ed P]

Oh – must be carpy Cinnamon, it is a standard feature on Mate. You will have to use the + in Cinnamon to ‘enhance’ the context menu to get it. Link

I’m glad I use Mate – this is a totally carp way of getting at the fundamental commands!

[Les.]

Ed, got it. It still needs an extra click to get to stuff, but the “Data” drive is not always visible when doing some tasks (saving), it will save a lot of clicking. I just expected it to be “simple” from the get-go.

When I first considered Mint, somebody here adviseded Cinamon, it tried it, it seemed easy, and generally has been. However, no sooner had I made the move, and most of the voices here said “Use Mate”. Too easy to stay as I am.

Thanks yet again.

Les.

[Ed P]

For future reference it would have been ‘easier’ if you had just moved your ‘Home’ partition. See article.

Unfortunately a soft-link cobble does not cover the situation where the word processor has been set up to use a specific directory. Try looking at the programs that cause problems and see if you can change the default ‘save’ directory.

 

[Les.]

Yesterday when I tried the LINK action, it all seemed to work. I shut down PC to do other stuff. Later, on restart, links were inactive. OK, maybe I did it wrong, by making link, then copying it across. So, I made a fresh link and MOVEd it. Seemed OK, but this morning, again no longer connecting to DATA drive. Following your last linked article, I think I understand why. However, a lot of steps there where a simple mistake could lead me into big trouble. I will read it a couple of times, then either “have a go”, or accept status quo.

Les.

[RSB]

I may be getting the wrong end of the stick but here you go. The drive/partiton is set to mount at boot isn’t it? If not that could be causing issues! Often a second drive is not mounted untill you navigate to it for the first time.

Search for disks in the menu and find mount at boot options.

Americans: Over Sexed, Over Payed and Over here, Wat Wat!

[Les.]

No Lee, you arn’t getting the wrong end of the stick, just exposing my ignorance. Instead of deleting those useless links this morning, I should have navigated to the data drive, then just  closed it. I just re-made the links, shut down and they were “dead”. Opened up “Data”, closed it, and desktop links were active.

I looked in “Discs”, but could find no “mount at boot ” options there. That would be one step better, following Ed’s link’s directions better still, but for now, that is progress.

Thanks, Les.

[RSB]

Ok so as mentioned, search disks in the menu and open it. Select the drive in question and then select the little cogs which will show a drop down menu. You can select mount options in there. Turn the auto slider of and tick the box mount at boot.

Americans: Over Sexed, Over Payed and Over here, Wat Wat!

[Les.]

Progress. It took two goes (no idea why), but here is my start up desktop, and clicking the link does the business.

I have a lot to learn, little time left to learn it, and with too many other things to do, I gues I will just need to keep asking. I TRY not to ask the same question twice, though that is not assured. Thanks everybody.

[RSB]

If I was asked a linux question a few years back I would of probably asked if you wanted chips with it or at least “well in windows 8 you do it this way” 🙂

Americans: Over Sexed, Over Payed and Over here, Wat Wat!

[D-Dan]

You could have still (and still could) just move home to the spinner. Copy your existing /home directory to the spinner, preserving permissions:

cp -ra /home /spinner/

replace spinner with the path to your spinner. (optionally you can add v to -ra for verbose copying)

Then modify /etc/fstab to mount home to the new directory

#Entry for /home :
UUID=UUID /home ext4 defaults,user_xattr,noatime 0 0

If you don’t have it formatted as ext4 you’ll need to change the type. You can get the UUID by running:

sudo blkid

Reboot and you should be good. To test, try renaming the original /home directory to /home.bak

Once it’s all good, you can delete /home.bak

Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.

[Les.]

Dan, that seems a better idea. I will go away and think it thro. This really is new territory for me. Don’t want to screw things completely.

Yes, spinner is formatted Ext 4. I managed that “all by myself”.

“Discs” seems to “do things”, but I can now see thanks to Lee that it does a LOT of stuff.

Les

[Dave Rice]

I can see why you don’t want to move the whole home to the spinner, but it’ll probably make it easier. You’ll have to move the existing docs on the spinner into the new Home or you’ll be in the same boat with symlinks.

Personally I would persist (no pun intended) with keeping the Home on the SSD and sorting out the auto mounting / link properties until it’s done your head in too much ?

[D-Dan]

By copying /home to the root of /spinner (i.e. not to a directory on the spinner) bearing in mind that copy is non-destructive, and then mounting the spinner as home, any documents already on the spinner will be automatically in /home after moving.

EDIT: Although, it is likely that there are some system /home directories in /home, and so it will be necessary to move the documents up the directory tree of new home to the user home directory.

Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.

[Les.]

All this started a few weeks ago when I had intermittent loss of picture. Various components were tried before a graphics card replacement fixed the fault. One suspect had been the 500GB spinner, so I fitted the current, known good/little used 160GB instead. Whilst doing all this I had my ancient La Cie backup spinner fail, but fortunately I had a complete install to copy away safely to another safe place.  I probably successfully reinstalled about 4 times to get to where I am right now.

So, I could simply REINSTALL once more to my now exonerated 500GB spinner, if anybody can suggest an “easy for me” procedure.

Cheers, Les.

[Les.]

There is a new Mint version, 19. Perhaps now is the time to do a new install from scratch, with HOME on the spinner from scratch. I will copy all my stuff to a backup drive, wipe the spinner clean do the fresh install to the SSD. So, I will repeat my previous final line from 8 months ago.   —-

” I could simply REINSTALL once more to my now exonerated 500GB spinner, if anybody can suggest an “easy for me” procedure.”

Cheers, Les,

[D-Dan]

You will probably still find, if you dig in to /etc/fstab that setting home to the spinner will just do what I suggested, without you having to do it yourself.

You could even disconnect the spinner, reinstall mint, and then reattach the spinner, remount and reset the link, which will preserve /home as it was in its entirety. This may not, however, yield the desired result, since there are several personal config file in $USER (/home/username) that you may not want.

Having said that, I’ve carried /home with me for maybe 15 years, through different distros, and expanded by adding drives and making further links to specific directories (Music, Videos etc.) without issue. Having said that, I know what to disregard (You need to examine dot files/directories in /home to decide what to keep)

Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.

[Author]

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