Mounting an extra partition onto home during installation

[yeehi]

I want to create a dedicated partition to hold my mail, because I often banjax my home partition and can only get linux going again by completely reinstalling. (I am a noob.)

The next time i install fedora i know what i want to do.

During installation i will format some space on my hdd with the intention of creating a partition on it after the set up has been completed. (I am not good enough to grant permissions during installation. Is this easy? If i dont get the permissions sorted i dont have a gui. And then i am usesless.)

So, once i get Fedora installed i get qparted going and spot the formatted space and then create a partition there...? And I mount it onto /home/yeehi...? Is that right? What do i call it / label it? /home/yeehi/mail ? Because that file directory is already there ready to hold my kmail stuff.

And how do i grant myself permission to access that partition when i dont log in as root.

I hope somebody can help as this is a long time problem i have had. If I can get *this * one sorted...

[crackers]

Why don't you just create a large enough partition and mount /home on it during installation? That way you don't have to mess around with re-partitioning and sub-mounting and a host of other work-arounds.

[yeehi]

Previously i tried creating the following partition during the initial installation:

/home/yeehi/mail

expecting it to be the answer to my dreams. It would be but I was never able to log into a gui not as root. I was thrown out of the session. I think the problem was i didn't have permissions correctly configured.

Also i recently heard it is not good practice to mount my partition at this level. It is meant to be better to mount it onto some existing one... i really didn't understand. I still don't.

I just want to keep my mail safe I don't want to use symlinks. (iiuc, they are just like shortcuts or something.) I want the e mail / address book from kmail (and ideally bookmarks for my browser) to automatically go onto a dedicated partition.

It seems so simple yet its not for me!

Please help

[imdeemvp]

using qparted or any other third party just create a fat32 or linux partition and then install fc2 i have a fat32 partition (logical of course to separate all my important data...

[yeehi]

I am actually able to make a partition using the disk druid at installation or after installation using qtparted.

That is not a problem for me.

My problem is that if i create a partition at /home/yeehi/mail my fedora system becomes unusable to me except perhaps as root.

I think this is because i need to, as root, somehow grant yeehi permissions to have that partition and to be able to access it. How would I do it?

Anyway, that said, creating a /home/yeehi/mail partition is meant to be a bad idea. Apparently i am meant to mount some free disk space onto a `standard` partition set up, ie. where there is one partition for boot, one for swap, one for / and one for /home.

I am so confused. Please help

[imdeemvp]

fat32 partitions are no problem to mount in fc2 or you can just make a directory in the /tmp folder, how much space are you will to use for this partiton?

some of my vip data is in the /tmp directory...it something happens to my main user i can always recover my data from the /tmp directory

[yeehi]

I will make a partition about 8 gigabytes.

Please somebody explain how i can get my /home/yeehi/mail partition to work!
It is not so simple as making a /home partition during installation. I have run into some kind of unidentified problem and i dont know how to solve it.

[imdeemvp]

Please somebody explain how i can get my /home/yeehi/mail partition to work!

1. you can not make an extra partition in your home directory you can make another directory but that should have been done during installation

2. the /tmp directory does not hold a limit in hd space so you can keep adding to it as much as you want so honestly you are better off doing that

3. if you dont know how to create partitions dont mess with disk druid to be safe

4. do you have a copy of knoppix? you can create linux partitions with knoppix and mount in fedora as directory also this way your paritition is always safe

[yeehi]

ok, this knoppix sounds like a way forward. I guess i can download and install it using yum, right?
Is it just the same as qtparted (which is a partition magic clone)?

I will try.
By the way, the /temp is on the / partition and i often end up formatting that... so i cant see how that would work....

But I have to be clearer. Let me try again. But maybe this partitioning has been a red herring!


Ideally i would like to have all my e mail stored on a dedicated hard disk. As it happens i have a spare hard disk. and would like to put that into my linux box.

During installation disk druid will ask me how i want my drives partitioned. So, to have all the e mail , and only the e mail stored on that hard disk, how would i go about configuring the installation?

Easy, you might say, simply format that disk as ext3 and name it /home/yeehi/mail

*But that doesn't work*!
If I do that, (I have done the equivalent with a partition not with a separate hard disk), if i do that i cant log in as yeehi because of some lack of permissions or something.

Thank you everybody who is still persevering with this thread.
I put this question to you: why is it that i will be thown out of my session in a millisecond if i mount the hard disk like that? can you see why i would get this problem? WHat can i do about it?

[yeehi]

It's not generally considered good practice to partition at the level you have - most partitions are typically mounted at the first directory level - e.g. /home, /usr. It can get potentially confusing by using sub-mounts.

And I haven't given yeehi permissions for /home/yeehi/mail and or all sub folders

[yeehi]

Woops! My last comment was not aimed at anyone, i was quoting verbatim somebody else.

I meant that *my* partitioning at that level is not good practice.