Hide Forgot
Description of problem: As in title really. I attempted to put /root on separate volume during install and both attempts (interactive install and kickstart) threw at me critical partitioning error: "This mount point is invalid. The /root directory must be on / filesystem.". Well, this is my job to decide what goes where, don't make me redundant and I don't see any technical reason why this shouldn't be allowed. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): anaconda 13.21.117 How reproducible: Always Actual results: anaconda does not allow putting /root on separate partition/volume Expected results: anaconda allows putting /root on separate partition/volume Additional info: Additionally I see two scenarios where separate /root volume is really beneficial: 1. read only / filesystem 2. test setup with many OSes where you want to share root home between them (and yes, I used to have setups with several Linux installations and keeping root in sync is a nightmare). SLES has no problems putting /root on separate partition.
/root is the root user account's home directory on RHEL systems. anaconda does not permit having /root on a filesystem other than /. The same is true for /bin, /dev, /sbin, /etc, and /lib.
Could you at least explain WHY? I do understand the reasoning for /bin, /sbin, /etc, and /lib, but I don't for /root. BTW /dev IS on separate filesystem: gklab-63-001:~> grep /dev /proc/mounts udev /dev devtmpfs rw,seclabel,relatime,size=4021724k,nr_inodes=1005431,mode=755 0 0
Well, /dev is virtual. But the /dev directory contains a handful of basic device nodes that can be used before udev starts up. Before we started using /root for root's home directory, we used /. So it followed that root's home directory would live on the root volume, despite being in a subdirectory. It makes sense for the root user to be able to log in and have access to his or her home directory in instances of system problems. Moving /root to a separate filesystem works against that safeguard. So I guess I don't see the advantage. "Because SuSE does it" is not a sufficient justification or use case. Why are you wanting to put /root on its own filesystem?
> It makes sense for the root user to be able to log in and have access to his or her home directory in instances of system problems. Moving /root to a separate filesystem works against that safeguard. So I guess I don't see the advantage. Ok, let's discuss this: 1. In case of problems with a system you are very likely to go into single user mode. Then you will be logged in / directory and not /root, so /root availability is not strictly speaking a requirement. 2. If /root is available, then it is mounted in single user mode (yes, I've just checked this). 3. Now, if system cannot mount /root at this stage there are two possibilities: a) it's on a network and I absolutely do not suggest putting /root there (anyway, I don't think partitioning screen in anaconda allows putting any directory on a network) b) volume with /root is so corrupted that if it was on / we would be in much bigger trouble. So for me, the reasonable requirement is to put /root on local filesystem (this includes iSCSI, FC and FCoE targets if / is there), /root on the same filesystem as / is too strict. Now I already explained why I want to separate this: 1. read only / filesystem. 2. I want to share /root between several OSes I have on the machine (multiboot). 3. You can extend the previous one to sharing /root with VMs (when used with appropriate filesystem like gfs2). 4. Additionally you don't pollute / with crap which tends to gather in home directories (and root will eat all free space, including the reserved space), and this itself can sometimes avoid boot-up/login problems.
In Fedora we follow the FHS unless there is agreement to do something different. See: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#Filesystem_Layout Here's what the FHS has to say about /root: http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#ROOTHOMEDIRECTORYFORTHEROOTUSER And the footnote: http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#FTN.AEN1037 The first sentence of the footnote is more or less my point: "If the home directory of the root account is not stored on the root partition it will be necessary to make certain it will default to / if it can not be located." If we change anaconda to allow /root on a separate filesystem, will Fedora still meet this FHS requirement? I don't know, but I think I'm safe in saying "maybe". I'm sure there is software in Fedora that assumes /root is on /, so for this change to really happen, the entire distribution needs to be audited to ensure it can handle /root on a separate filesystem.