a blodg

blodgett enters snail mode! it transports its home for convenience, via potentially crackpot method detailed below.

step 1: formats the sd card to ext4 avec gparted

step 2: mount cart where wanted e.g.
sudo mount -t ext4 /dev/sdb1 /media/home

step 3: set owner of cart to blodgett:
sudo chown blodgett: /media/home

[note: colon after blodgett signifies that group is changed to blodgett’s group as well as changing owner to blodgett]

step 4: copy home dir into new/currently non-existent directory on cart:
cp -r –preserve=all /home/blodgett/ /media/home/blodgett

[preserve arg is for keeping of all attributes. notenote that cp /home/blodgett/* not copy hidden directories so must cp to new directory entire]

step 5: find uuid of cart typing
sudo blkid /dev/sdb1

step 6: add cart to list of things that get mounted automatically. this requires to edit the file /etc/fstab. if not done then lxdm at least don’t want to log you in. (terminal login work fine, then have to run step 2.)
added following line:
UUID=(uuid from step 5) /media/home ext4 errors=remount-ro,noatime 0 2

noatime is to turn off records of last file access time. this stops it writing stuff that blodgett not really interested in.
first zero indicates to dump program that no backups are to be made of this; blodgett not using dump. two at end is order that filesystem checker (fsck) will check this one. zero for off, but blodgett want checks and had only 1 other checked volume (root).

step 7: check that everything datas ok on cart and delete home directory. (blodgett has backups elsewhere so not too paranoid about doing this.) then make symlink from old home to cart directory:
sudo rm -r /home/blodgett
sudo ln -s /media/home/blodgett /home/blodgett

step 8: reboot! blodgett not noticed any difficulties yet…

in case of interest, blodgett’s cart is a PNY 16GB Class 10 (zoomfastfast) from here, 16 cashmonies:
http://www.play.com/Electronics/Electronics/4-/16337083/PNY-16GB-SD-SDHC-Class-10-Memory-Card/Product.html

it seem to work well in tinyshiny (eee 901) and camera (ricoh r7)

UPDATE!!
further tweakings have occurred, as eee gets slightly miffed when cart not present.
tweak 1: make a permanent mount directory:
sudo mkdir /media/home

tweak 2: stop boot process (which runs mount -a) from trying to load sd automatically by adding noauto to options field of volume in step 6:
noauto,errors=remount-ro,noatime

tweak 3: add following to /etc/rc.local before “exit 0” line, to check whether sd present (-b checks for block device), and only mount if so:

# try to mount sd card if present, otherwise do nothing
if [ -b /dev/sdb ]; then
mount /dev/sdb1
fi

if necessary, can now also mount manually with just “sudo mount /dev/sdb1”

blodgett owes thanks ici for instructions:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=9492847&postcount=10