How to have /home directory on multiple drives?

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
1

Here’s my plan with a 500GB SSD and 4TB HDD:

  • 500GB will contain config files, games (high priority) & local apps
  • 4TB will contain Documents, Pictures, Videos, Downloads, some games (lower priority), etc.

I also want that spanned to multiple users as well.

How can I do that exactly, especially with some Snap apps unable to access removable media?

Edit: currently testing symlinking documents, videos, etc. from second drive to /home. Only problem is that, unless a Snap’s removable-media plug exists and plugged, it can’t read & access files & directories outside of home.

Edit 2: resolved
I got Snap to read and write to the second drive without the need of removable-media plug by placing it in /home/mnt, and create a symlink to the directories in there.

2

I tend to keep it simple and have /home on a smaller faster disk and mount my secondary drive to somethink like /disk2 and create a folders in there I am the owner of. It’s simple enough to install games to both disks. If you want the second disk to appear under /home, which is the mount point for the first disk you could create a directory link.

EDIT: This kind of thing: https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/creating-soft-link-or-symbolic-link/

3

for my desktop (that i game on)

I installed the OS on LVM
/ on one LV
/home on another LV

then I used an ssd and lvmcache to speed both up LVs. (writeback mode)

The boot times were cut in probably a 1/3. and my games load so much faster.

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4

Does LVMCache persist across boots, or does it need to start from scratch? I’m mildly concerned about flash wearout. I destroyed a couple 850 pros in a year using them for ZIL/SLOG on my NAS.

5

Persistent

Hence why booting got faster

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6

right Of course I miss that.

Good to know though. Every time I rebooted my NAS, I lost 500gb of l2arc, so it’s nice to hear that this is improved.

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7

Shouldn’t a fix be coming for this on zfs?

sorry for the OT

8

It’s apparently there on one platform, but it’s gonna take a while to propagate to BSD and Linux.

For example, BSD has had TRIM on SSD for about 2 years now. Linux still doesn’t. :frowning:

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9

Yeah I was aware of symlinking. I just didn’t know at first how to mount it, and have sanboxed software, like Snaps, read and write to it without the need of removable-media permission.

I solved it by mounting it to /home/mnt.

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