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up vote 4 down vote favorite

During the installation I thought I had generated the correct fstab, but now, after cp complains that the filesystem is full, I discover that fstab is empty.

I have this configuration:

# lsblk 
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 232.9G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0   238M  0 part 
├─sda2   8:2    0   1.9G  0 part 
├─sda3   8:3    0  23.3G  0 part /
└─sda4   8:4    0 207.5G  0 part

But this is absolutely not what I want. I'd like to mount /dev/sda1 as /boot and /dev/sda4 as /home/user. /dev/sda2 is swap.

The problem is that I already added a ton of files in /home/user, all of which went in /dev/sda3, because that one was the only one mounted.

How do I fix this?

I could boot from a live cd, mount the partitions, run genfstab, but then? Where do my files under /home/user go? Is it safe?

Should I move all my home content into a temporary directory, mount /dev/sda4 and copy everything back?

share|improve this question
    
your files are in the sda3 so changing fstab by itself won't move the files. You could mkdir /home.new; mount /home.new /dev/sda4; mv /home/user /home.new; umount /home.new; rmdir /home; mv /home.new /home; mount /dev/sda4 /home; and then edit fstab to mount /home. –  bdowning Jun 29 '14 at 10:21
    
@bdowning: Ah, thank you for confirming what I was thinking. At which point should I run genfstab, at the end, after having mounted the right /home? –  rubik Jun 29 '14 at 10:26
    
@bdowning: Since I don't think there is a better way to do it, if you make an answer out of your comment, I'll gladly accept it. –  rubik Jun 29 '14 at 10:28
    
Well it didn't let me use mv because it was an inter-device operation, so I had to cp first and then rm. But now everything's ok! –  rubik Jun 29 '14 at 12:26
    
I made this as comment rather than an answer because it's not a general answer to a general problem encountered by many, but rather a specific prob encountered by you. –  bdowning Jun 29 '14 at 16:31

1 Answer 1

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Your files are in the sda3 partition, so changing fstab by itself won't move the files.
You could (among several alternatives)

mkdir /home.new
mount /dev/sda4 /home.new 
cp -a /home/user /home.new
umount /home.new
rf -fr /home
mv /home.new /home
mount /dev/sda4 /home

then edit fstab to include /home /dev/sda4

share|improve this answer
    
Just a typo in the first mount! Argument order should be reversed. :) –  rubik Jun 29 '14 at 20:23

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