a few questions on installing mandriva one 2009 gnome

since i am unhappy with my first install, i just want to ask a few questions because i am going to give it a chance and install it again later. my questions are all geared towards the card readers, since it bugs me the most:

when i install mandriva, do i need to keep the 2 card readers occupied?

how do i make my 16gb sdhc card my /home? is it through the custom partitioning option in the live install?

and does hotswapping cards triggers the issues? i seem to notice that after i removed my sdhc card on the left, i cannot mount it anymore on both slots.

any help would be appreciated. i am looking forward to a better mandriva experience other than the nightmare i am experiencing with my machine. thanks.

 

Disclaimers
1. I don't use Mandriva. That being said, the technique should work for any distro.
2. I have not done this and take no responsibility if your system violently objects. That being said, if it
doesn't work, just boot from a live USB stick, delete line you will add to /etc/fstab below, and reboot.

Assumptions
1. the modules needed to read the SDHC card(s) are loaded before /etc/fstab is read and acted upon
2. the SDHC card is formatted with an ext2 filesystem

You'll need the UUID of the card. There are several ways to get it; the one I typically use is

Code:

sudo blkid -c /dev/null

Your SDHC card will show up as something like /dev/mmcblk0p1. Note the UUID

as root, edit /etc/fstab and add a line like this:

Code:

UUID=<the UUID of your SDHC card>   /home   ext2   defaults 0 0

Before rebooting, mount the SDHC card somewhere (but not on /home), and copy the contents of /home to the SDHC card. Then reboot and hope that I haven't steered you too far wrong

 

what do you mean by mount it somewhere, but not on /home? thanks.

 

Code:

 
sudo mkdir /mnt/newhome
sudo mount /dev/<sdhc_cards_device_name> /mnt/newhome

then

Code:

cp -a /home/* /mnt/newhome

The idea behind copying rather than moving is that if it screws up, you still have everything in your original /home.
When the SDHC card is mounted on /home, the original /home is hidden

 

Whoa, thanks a lot. Now I know what to do and how it works. Thanks a lot. You were very helpful.