Home Directory Disappeared - Can't Log In

[ArchiMark]

Hope someone can please advise.....

I'm dual booting LM17Mate and Win8 on my little Lenovo Flex 10 laptop....

Was working OK until something odd happened last evening.

At some point I noticed that the icons for the Computer and one other item disappearred from the desktop. But system was still working OK or so it seemed.

Later I restarted laptop and when I login, I get error message:

Your home directory is listed as '/home/mark' but it does not appear to exist. Do you want to log in with the / (root) directory as your home directory? It is unlikely anything will work unless you use a failsafe session.

If I click 'Yes' the display goes dark and I never get to desktop.

Anyway to fix this or do I have to reinstall LinuxMint?

Thanks for any help!

Mark

[Zalbor]

Do you remember if you did anything unusual before the problem started?

Also, it would help to have some information on your partitions. Try to run the following commands in a terminal and post their output:

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sudo parted -l

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cat /etc/fstab

Also:

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ls -l /home

I'm not sure I could personally help with whatever the problem is, but the information may be useful.

EDIT: If you don't know how to use the terminal without logging in normally, try to press Ctrl+Alt+F1 and log in there (remember that you can't see your password, just type it and press enter).
EDIT 2: Thinking about, that won't help much since you won't be able to copy the text. Could you either take a picture of the screen with the output, or find another way?

[ArchiMark]

Thank you for your help....

I recall that I was trying to unmount the SD card after copying some files to it. Then I removed the card and restarted laptop. That's when I first got the problem logging in....

Here's the info requested:

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# parted -l
Model: ATA Samsung SSD 840 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 250GB
Sector Size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

Number  Start       End         Size      File System   Name                        Flags
 1           17.4kB   134MB    134MB                                                         msftres
 2           135MB    1184MB  1049MB   ntfs                                              diag
 3           1184MB  1456MB   273MB    fat32                                            boot
 4           1456MB   119GB    117GB    ntfs                                              msftdata  
 5           119GB    159GB     40.0GB  ext4             Basic data partition   msftdata
 8           159GB    222GB    63.0GB   ext4            
 9           222GB    224GB    1858MB  linux-swap(1) 
 6           224GB    237GB     13.0GB  ntfs                                              msftdata
 7           237GB   13.2GB     13.2GB  ntfs                                              diag

# cat /etc/fstab
# <file system>                                            <mount point>     <type>    <options>          <dump>   <pass>
# / was on /dev/sda5 during installation
#UUID=191f65af-e0fc-4a55-ada7-de493b749095   /                   ext4      errors=remount-ro  0          1
# /boot/efi was on /dev/sda3 during installation
#UUID=D3CB-11A7                                           /boot/efi          vfat       defaults                 0          1
# /home was on /dev/sda8 during installation 
#UUID=c7e2825-b080-4ef4-a23a-adc47dc8cdfc   /home             ext4      defaults                 0          2
# swap was on /dev/sda9 during installation     
#UUID=8f57f6f8-7afd-43d0-bb68-d19bb947e0cf    none              swap      sw                        0          0
/dev/mmcblk0p1                                                /                    ext4     noatime,nodiratime,commit=600,reservation,defaults,errors=remount-ro                           0          1

# ls -l /home
total 0

[WharfRat]

This line in /etc/fstab

#UUID=c7e2825-b080-4ef4-a23a-adc47dc8cdfc /home ext4 defaults 0 2

is commented out by the '#'.

That will prevent the /home partition from mounting

[Cosmo.]

Not only that line, but the complete sda is commented out. But this does not happen by unmounting a SD card, even not, if "removing" it should have been done without unmounting it beforehand. .....

[WharfRat]

Not only that line, but the complete sda is commented out. But this does not happen by unmounting a SD card, even not, if "removing" it should have been done without unmounting it beforehand. .....

Good eye, I missed that

[ArchiMark]

Thanks for catching this!

I should have noticed this......

Wonder how I managed to do this.....

Don't have my laptop with me now, but will uncomment drive early tomorrow morning....

Thanks!

[deleted]

You can't edit that file without being root (su) or using sudo.
-Zumwalt

[ArchiMark]

You can't edit that file without being root (su) or using sudo.
-Zumwalt

Yes, understand.....

Thanks!

[Zalbor]

I noticed something else about that fstab:

A normal-looking entry for / (the root partition) is commented out, and a really strange one is uncommented. It looks like "/dev/mmcblk0p1" points to an SD card, right?

ArchiMark: How did you unmount the SD card? It looks to me like the SD card is mounted as /, and everything else is not mounted at all.

[ArchiMark]

You can't edit that file without being root (su) or using sudo.
-Zumwalt

Yes, understand.....

Thanks!

Booted up in LM Recovery Mode and got to console as root.

I see root prompt #....

Tried editing /etc/fstab file, but I can't save the changes as it says it's read only.....

Now what?????

Thanks!

[ArchiMark]

I noticed something else about that fstab:

A normal-looking entry for / (the root partition) is commented out, and a really strange one is uncommented. It looks like "/dev/mmcblk0p1" points to an SD card, right?

ArchiMark: How did you unmount the SD card? It looks to me like the SD card is mounted as /, and everything else is not mounted at all.

Yes, the /dev/mmcblk0p1 points to a SD card......as I'd noted, I was working with a SD around time that system went wonky on me....

It seems that when I unmounted the card, for some reason, system went haywire.....

[WharfRat]

Recovery mode mounts the partition as read only. Remount it read/write

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mount -o remount,rw  /

[ArchiMark]

Recovery mode mounts the partition as read only. Remount it read/write

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mount -o remount,rw  /

Everything is back to normal now.....

THANKS to you and everyone else here that assisted.

The friendly and helpful assistance here makes it a pleasure to use LM and learn more about linux.

Mark