I am going to try to upgrade (first) when the point release comes out. My question is, I have /home on a separate partition, will the upgrade know and preserve that?
Hi Brian,
All the upgrades I ever did have always preserved my separate /home partition. Even new installs have done that in the past (although I always used manual partitioning with new installs).
So my educated guess is that 24.04 will cause no problems when upgrading.
Ofcourse, when it comes down to a new install instead of an upgrade, that wouId be a different story altogether.
Based on my experiences with that erratic flutter/snap based installer I would not blindly trust it to do the right thing.
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The only issues I experienced in Quality Assurance testing with ubuntu-desktop-installer used by Ubuntu MATE 24.04 LTS were attempts to non-destructively re-install on a single-partition, where a bug was discovered that prevented initial login... and the fix for this (due to lack of time) was to force format in that use-case. This will not impact you though, as you mention a separate partition (I didn't experience any issues).
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I have for a long time maintained /home in a separate partition.
BUT, beginning with 24.04 I had difficulty getting the installer to create a bootable version with / in one partition and /home in another.
Now I have everything in one large partition but might go back for the next release and resize the partition into two partitions and try again.
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@mickee, @tkn, @guiverc, @CWMOSER,
My configuration is 8 data and 2 swap partitions on my 2TB root disk. I also have 1 swap partition on the secondary 500BG drive, currently using UbuntuMATE 22.04 LTS.
I got hit with the issue of HOME directory not being on the root partition during installation, but only once.
Also, I had timing issues once with boot, not finding my home, because it was on a second partition.
Since then, I have worked with a "hybrid" definition of my HOME directory setup.
I create the actual HOME directory on the root partition as usual, BUT, I place everything else that would normally be in that directory (except for hidden dot files) on the separate partition (in my case, /DB001_F2/home/{dirname}; second data partition on the root partition) according to the following, and create symbolic links pointing to those, including my Desktop.
username@hostname:/home/username# ls -l | grep '^l'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 33 Oct 30 2020 Desktop -> /DB001_F2/home/username.Desktop
lrwxrwxrwx 1 35 Oct 30 2020 Documents -> /DB001_F2/home/username.Documents
lrwxrwxrwx 1 35 Oct 30 2020 Downloads -> /DB001_F2/home/username.Downloads
lrwxrwxrwx 1 31 Oct 30 2020 Music -> /DB001_F2/home/username.Music
lrwxrwxrwx 1 29 Jan 3 2021 PanelLayoutStorage -> /usr/share/mate-panel/layouts
lrwxrwxrwx 1 34 Oct 30 2020 Pictures -> /DB001_F2/home/username.Pictures
lrwxrwxrwx 1 32 Oct 30 2020 Public -> /DB001_F2/home/username.Public
lrwxrwxrwx 1 35 Oct 30 2020 Templates -> /DB001_F2/home/username.Templates
lrwxrwxrwx 1 32 Oct 30 2020 Videos -> /DB001_F2/home/username.Videos
username@hostname:/home/username#
I also have the following systemd "want" definitions to ensure the boot process waits for the second disk, /DB001_F2, and that it is properly available before proceeding:
lightdm.service.d/override.conf:RequiresMountsFor=/DB001_F2
lightdm.service.d/override.conf.lightdm.service.hostname:RequiresMountsFor=/DB001_F2
sysinit.target.d/override.conf:RequiresMountsFor=/DB001_F2
sysinit.target.d/override.conf.sysinit.target.hostname:RequiresMountsFor=/DB001_F2
This configuration leaves me with a viable user account at all times, but with all my personal user data off the root partition.
I haven't had any issues of being "frozen out" since.
But, paranoid as I am when it comes to systems (well-founded in experience), I always have my full backup done before I try anything with an upgrade (only did that once, never again) or a full install which always requires custom control of the partitioning ... because I have actual swap partitions on that root partition ... for which "Ubuntu install" seems to have a non-friendly attitude. I had a bad experience I don't want to repeat.
The the install process always creates a fresh HOME with contents, then I switch out directories with symlinks and merge in those directories with profiles that I wish to keep. By doing this, I have managed to keep my Firefox's "ancient" Bookmark properties window, namely
which is not available with the default, new-installation, profiles.
The one reservation I have about the install is that I always have to advance to the step where it confirms the actions that will be taken by the partition customization step, before I actually know that all will be as I want it to be, forcing me to go back multiple times, essentially at every install, in order to get it right.
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