Changing the shell home directory to use memory extension

Hi!

I'm using Aspire One Linpus with a 16GB memory card extension. When I inserted the card, Linpus automatically prepared and mounted the disk as extension space for my home directory. If I understand correctly, it uses "aufs" to create a union of two different locations (/media/disk and /home/user) into /mnt/home. The file manager does seem to display this union correctly - however when I open a shell, my home directory is /home/user, so I see only some of the files.

How do I change the shell home directory to be the correct /mnt/home? And is it safe to do so, or is the shell directory different for some good reason?

 

Off the top of my head, the only way I can think of doing this would be changing the line in /etc/passwd that starts with "user" and changing "/home/user" to "/mnt/home". What the ultimate ramifications of doing so would be, I'm not sure? What would happen for example if SD card wasn't inserted? Or what if the merging takes place sometimes later in the bootup procedure leaving user without a home directory? If you want to be adventurist, you could try it and let us know.

Cheers.

 

Well, it would indeed be interesting to just try it... but I guess I'd better figure out the process of backing up the system first.