On Tue, 2008-05-20 at 10:45 +0100, Mark Rogers wrote:
Maybe consumer distros like Ubuntu, when faced with a big hard disk to install on, should default to creating a large backup partition onto which /home is backed up regularly in the background (by root, so the backups can't be deleted by a user level program). Sure, allow it to be turned off, but as a default that would be very good in my view, and a better use of background CPU than search indexing or anti-virus scanning.
It's a theory but one that only protects against a subset of potential reasons why you have lost files. I think a better solution would be something put together with hotplug storage/rsync/snapshotting that detects when a removable drive of a reasonable size is plugged in and asks if it can use that drive to store snapshots of your homedir. It could remember the volume from the volid and only ask you once for each volume. Perhaps also pop up a reminder if it hasn't seen a drive to back up to for a while. Sort of a bit like Apple's time machine I guess.
In fact I would be surprised if someone out there isn't working on something to do exactly that.
I think (besides it not protecting against a dead disk or stolen machine) the problem with your suggestion is that new users who just click through the installer will be faced with only half their disk space being available and then be in a situation where the fix to resolve this is a fairly complicated and potentially dangerous (for a new user) dance of repartitioning to get a full size home dir