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/home partition read-only

Posted: Sat Nov 12, 2011 6:33 pm
by dupie
Whenever I boot my system, I find the /home dir (which is its own partition) is read-only.
Upon entering "mount":

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/dev/sda2 on /home type ext2 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
My friend, who has experience in UNIX, tells me this is caused by an unclean shutdown, but could provide no further instruction.
How can I make my /home not mount as read-only? I would be much obliged to whomever can help me with this issue.

Re: /home partition read-only

Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2011 8:06 am
by xenopeek
This is correct. /home folder is read-only and can only be written to by root. Your /home/username folder should be both readable and writable by you. Please check with:

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ls -ld /home
That you get an output like (the parts in red should match):
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2011-07-03 06:25 /home
And also check with:

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ls -ld ~
That you get an output like (the parts in red should match, but have your username instead):
drwx------ 56 vincent vincent 12288 2011-11-13 10:02 /home/vincent
If all matches, nothing is wrong. You only have write permission on your own home folder, not on anything else, and that is how it should be.

Re: /home partition read-only

Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2011 12:54 pm
by dupie
xenopeek wrote:This is correct. /home folder is read-only and can only be written to by root. Your /home/username folder should be both readable and writable by you. Please check with:

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ls -ld /home
That you get an output like (the parts in red should match):
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2011-07-03 06:25 /home
And also check with:

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ls -ld ~
That you get an output like (the parts in red should match, but have your username instead):
drwx------ 56 vincent vincent 12288 2011-11-13 10:02 /home/vincent
If all matches, nothing is wrong. You only have write permission on your own home folder, not on anything else, and that is how it should be.
I didn't know this was how it was meant to be, but let me correct myself.
My /home/dupie directory is read-only. I can view, but not edit or add to my documents, pictures, music, etc.

Re: /home partition read-only

Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2011 1:38 pm
by rekik
Is your Home partition automounted on boot ? If so, providing /etc/fstab content will help

Re: /home partition read-only

Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2011 3:58 pm
by xenopeek
Please also post:

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ls -ld /home
ls -la ~
That way we can see how everything is set with regards to permissions. Don't forget to include "cat /etc/fstab", as there may be something wrong there.