Moving? /home after setting up separate partition for it

[Slayd]

I tried to re-install KDE with a separate partition for /home AND btrfs for root. At the time of installation, the single partition was btrfs, but when I was done with the installation, root was on ext4 and /home on btrfs.

There wasn’t a way to specify the format when I was replacing a partition (root) as opposed to erasing the entire disk.

I have installed kde as one big partition and then went in kparted and made it two partitions, setting the second one with a mount point /home. Both partitions, sda2 and sda3 are btrfs.

My question: does the system automatically ‘move’ /home to sda3? Or do I need to move it. If I need to move it, how do I do that?

thanks

[maycne.sonahoz]

Moving /home to second hdd

Welcome to the forum! First things first… Did you already create a new partition for /home on the other drive? If not, do so, and after you’ve created and formatted it, use lsblk to get the UUID of the partition. Alternatively, you can also set a LABEL in the filesystem upon creation, and use the LABEL in /etc/fstab, instead of the UUID. So long as the identifier for the partition is unique and persistent, which unfortunately the /dev/sd[alphabetic_char] designations are not …

[Slayd]

Thanks for your prompt reply. When I do lsblk, I see /home (and /root…) on sda2 and no mount points on sda3. /etc/fstab shows the following:

UUID=25E5-7FCF /boot/efi vfat umask=0077 0 2
UUID=47655f5e-785a-4f9f-b5f3-e0f87730049f / btrfs subvol=/@ 0 0
UUID=47655f5e-785a-4f9f-b5f3-e0f87730049f /home btrfs subvol=/@home 0 0
UUID=47655f5e-785a-4f9f-b5f3-e0f87730049f /var/cache btrfs subvol=/@cache 0 0
UUID=47655f5e-785a-4f9f-b5f3-e0f87730049f /var/log btrfs subvol=/@log 0 0
UUID=47655f5e-785a-4f9f-b5f3-e0f87730049f /swap btrfs subvol=/@swap 0 0
/swap/swapfile swap swap noatime 0 0
/dev/sda3 /home btrfs defaults 0 0

so /home is showing on both sda2 and sda3, but no UUID for sda3 and no subvol=/@home there either.

[Slayd]

Both sda2 and sda3 are on the same drive. Is the UUID a drive identifier?

[maycne.sonahoz]

@Slayd

so /home is showing on both sda2 and sda3

That is wrong, you should have only one. Remove the one you don’t want.

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@Slayd

Is the UUID a drive identifier?

It’s a partition identifier.

[Slayd]

Thanks. I found out the UUID for the sda3 partition.

I went into fstab and entered the UUID for sd3, moved the options for /home from sda2 and put them in sda3.

Then all hell broke lose

I had to reinstall the live kde to start over

I’m not sure how to have my system recognize and shift to a new /home

[maycne.sonahoz]

@Slayd

moved the options for /home from sda2 and put them in sda3

You can’t simply move mount options around: fstab - ArchWiki
Most notably, the main difference between the two recorded home mounts is that the latter sits at the root of the partition, while the former is a subvolume: Btrfs - ArchWiki

[Slayd]

Thanks for your patience and help maycne.

I ended up re-installing KDE. When I selected the custom partitioning, I finally got to a screen that allowed me to enter mount points.

I was able to press and install to sda2 with /home on sda3. Both partitions have btrfs.

I don’t know what I was doing wrong in the installer initially.

I learned a lot from your advice. Thanks again.