Mike,

Is your home directory on a separate partition on the same disk? If so,
is it mounted? I think `lsblk` would give you that information on most
distros. Full disclosure, I've only done something like this on Arch
Linux, so maybe there are more informed people on the subject. A less
technical/easier solution would probably just be to reinstall and point
to the correct partition without wiping it. And everything gets much
harder if you have encrypted disks.

Since you are making big alterations to your main user, you might
consider logging out and then logging into root on the tty or something
like that. The root user's files are usually at /root instead of in /home.

I think a short term solution that might work is something along the
lines of:

```
rm -rf /home/ #make sure you first back up the files you need
    # or maybe better do `mv /home /home.bkp`
mount /dev/sdXY /home
```

And then long term you would have to add a statement in /etc/fstab that
accomplishes that mount statement on boot. This is presuming your user
name (and maybe UID?) are the same from your old install originating
that home partition. Otherwise you might have to add some `chown`
alterations afterward as well.

See: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fstab

Be careful because:
    1. Incorrect syntax in /etc/fstab will stop your machine from
    booting properly. I think you can edit /etc/fstab on the command
    line in recovery mode, but if not you'd have to edit that file
    booted from a live installation image.

    2. Running `chown -R` statements might possibly break how things
    were working if they needed particular permissions. This would
    matter much more if it were outside /home/your_user .

You might do a practice run mounting the partition somewhere else, maybe
in the existing home directory e.g. `/home/your_user/mnt` or something
like that. Don't accidentally `rm -r` into your mounted partition. Add
the partition mounting to this alternate point to fstab and make sure
that process worked like how you wanted.  Changing fstab is probably
going to be the most difficult part.  On Arch Linux there is a cli
module called `genfstab` that might help you in the case it's available.

I suspect you could probably get more guided help at one of the saturday
install fest sessions. I've never been to one, though.


Good luck! Someone interject if there is some bad advice here.

Zack

On 22/07/27 08:18PM, Michael via PLUG-discuss wrote:
> On my new mint install home partition was preserved but was not set as
> my home directory. I think home is on the root partition. I don't want
> to reinstall again so would someone walk me through setting it up?
> 
> -- 
> :-)~MIKE~(-:

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