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[#1]

I have an old XP tower that works, The laptop HD is not easy to get out but if needs must it is possible.
df gives me much as yours but with the difference that sda3 is described as: /media/_home !! I think that this is all rooted in my formatting the partition before putting the /home into it. I had a fresh look at fstab in file browser and it does list sda3 not as I said above.

[#2]

OK if NO /home IS listed then it lives in the / partition. This means that it is still in sda1. You can IGNORE sda3 if all your files are still in sda1.
But I would still boot another pc with the cd and make sure it is a lt issue.

[#3]

XP machine has just booted into Ubuntu (eventually), it did come up with the choice of Try and Install, I went to the former and it (eventually) came up with the brown display with Examples and Install lkons....no log-on panel!! Examples looked OK.
I am sure that all my old /home stuff is in sda3, you may remember that it appears as another drive and I can see all the data in it. I think that sda1 has its own /home with all the routine folders in it but definitely none of my stuff. The modification of the label of sda1 and the fact that it is seen as another drive would mean that / does not know that it is there I guess.

[#4]

I'm going to guess that sda3 is (possibly) mounted as /media/_home
and that sda1 contains a /home directory.
I'm going to suggest that you add a line (on a temporary basis) to your laptop /etc/fstab

Quote

/media/_home    /_home   ext3    relatime 0 2

After a reboot, try

sudo du --max-depth=1 -h /_home

Repeat for /home
Report back.

[#5]

Jeremy,
Thanks for that, I will be away from the keyboard for a couple of weeks but hope to survive and get down to business after then. Enjoy your peace in the meantime!
Regards.
Colin

[#6]

Hi Jeremy,
Hols and consequental activities over! I can now report a bit of progress...I have successfully got all my old /home on to a USB stick at last!! I did not get much of any interest from your last post but thanks all the same. I did find some error messages, probably were my own fault but time ran out. You were quite right in your thoughts about the locations of the two "/homes", it was all a metter of the formatting of sda3 in the first place.
I now feel more comfortable in doing a clean install of 10,04.2, which may well resolve all my present issues. Following the earlier guidance I should than have the proper layout of the partitions in place with the now (presumably unformatted) sda3 labelled as /home. It remains to be seen what happens to the original contents I think. Is there any advantage in clearing out sda3 and allowing the installation to insert its /home into it and then installing the personal data from the stick to allow future access?
I intend to to take small steps at a time now!
Regards

[#7]

Don't just let the installer do it's default thing.
See previous posts in this thread.
Before you start, plan on 3 partitions - I suggest you format all of these during the install as it is better to have your /home in a known state.
(You wouldn't format your /home partition in any future upgrade).
You will need:-
A / partition
A swap partion
A /home partition
I suggest that, provided you have proper backups, that just before you start the install, you use the CD to remove ALL partitions from your hard disk).
But please get back with your planned partition layout.
Are you in a position to ONLY restore data from your backup of /home - you will lose some application preferences/personalisation?

[#8]

I am now a bit puzzled,previous advice led me to believe that the arrangement ought to be:-
                    sda1 / ext3
                    sda2 swap    no format
                    sda3 /home  no format
Please clarify. Also is ext3 suitable as HB suggested?

[#9]

It doesn't really matter whether you format with ext3 or ext4.
Previous advice was based on your having created a separate /home partition - but you appear to have two of them?
I'm basically suggesting you destroy everything on your hard disk and start again.
A full Ubuntu install takes about 20 minutes with only one reboot, so if it goes wrong it's easy to repeat (unlike Windows)
Unless you have a known good separate partition which is solely devoted to /home my suggestion would be to install from scratch, creating a new (empty) /home in the process.
You would then need to copy your files from your backup to your /home directory - data files only.

[#10]

OK I see where you are coming from now. Will have a go using the Live Disk in Install mode. Only one query, is it necessary to format the swap sda2 or is the formatting a way to ensure that the partitions are quite empty?
Regards,
C

[#11]

Formatting ensures that all data is wiped and that a valid file system is set-up.
I don't think you will be asked to format the swap partition, though.
Ensure you use the manual (advanced) type of install, so you have full control!

[#12]

Just DELETE all the partitions and start again. Easiest way now you have your data save.
From a BLANK Drive (in gparted select new Partition Table)
choose
one partition for / (30gb is good size)
one partition for /home (rest of the drive - the swap file size)
one partition for swap (2xram if less than 512Mb or if >2Gb you don't  need it)
so assuming a machine with 512Mb of ram and a 100Gb HDD
/ = 30Gb
/home = 69Gb
Swap=1Gb
Whether you use ext3 or 4 is up to you there is no real performance difference on a normal machine.

[#13]

Quote from: Hairy

one partition for swap (2xram if less than 512Mb or if >2Gb you don't  need it)

I disagree that you don't need swap if you have over 2GB RAM. Well, you don't 'need' it but I'd still recommend having it. The kernel swaps things that haven't been used for a while to disk if it's available, which keeps your memory free for things it's actually using. And if you do start doing memory intensive tasks, swap can give you a bit of extra overhead.

[#14]

The ram vs swap was the recommended. If you use memory intensive tasks (like large gimp files) then you are probably not using a "normal" pc but a higher spec one. I recommended the above given a normal pc/user I would also suggest changing the vmswappieness to a higher value but that is beyond this simple task.
You could use 2x swap for as much ram as you have but why waste disk space if you will never use it?
(e.g. I have 3Gb of ram on this PC and 1Gb of swap, with 2 FF widows (with 10+ tabs in each), TB and several background tasks running I am using 1.2Gb of ram and ZERO swap)

[#15]

I never said to use 2 x RAM all the time for swap!
Personally I use  2 x RAM for < 2GM RAM, and 2GB swap for anything else.