I also tend to sometimes have a separate /home, but on small-disk
machines (only 4-10G or so :-) I often keep home in /usr to avoid
running out of space.  On these machines I make a /usr/home and
symlink that into /.  I always put /home/username in
/etc/master.passwd, and this has worked well for me.

It would be nice if the instalation process had a checkbox for ("home
in /usr/home") for installs where there is no /home partition and
there is a /usr partition.  Arguably in this case (pretty normal for
those who don't want / to be the whole disk) this is an appropriate
default choice.

I think that in the past I had minor annoyances with an upgrade
removing my /home symlink and putting a /home directory there, but I
haven't done a binary upgrade on a machine without an actual /home in
a while.

-- 
        Greg Troxel <gdt@ir.bbn.com>