home folder not mounted to /home [SOLVED]

[52ROSt]

LM20 Cinnamon

The content of my /home/user folder is not on my /home partition.

While installing my system newly, I observed that that my / partition gets full quickly. As I am not really familiar with all needed terminal commands, I searched for the cause using Nemo and looking for the free space for /home/user indicated at the bottom of Nemo.
I saw the freespace was only 2 GB while there where less about 20GB of data in folders belonging to /home/user. I played around with some lager file an could clearly see how free space od /home is changing in the same way.

Next using the terminal to look for the partitions I see

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$ sudo sfdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 465.78 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Disk model: TOSHIBA MQ01ACF0
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xbe369a5e

Device     Boot     Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *         2048   1050623   1048576   512M  b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda2         1052670 976771071 975718402 465.3G  5 Extended
/dev/sda5        88698880 104321023  15622144   7.5G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6       104323072 976771071 872448000   416G 83 Linux
/dev/sda7         1052672  88696831  87644160  41.8G 83 Linux

Partition 2 does not start on physical sector boundary.
Partition table entries are not in disk order.

sda6 is is my /home partition with 416GB

using

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cfdisk

and selecting in the terminal /dev/sda6/ I understand that the mounting is wrong. Mounting point is:

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 /run/timeshift/backup (mounted) 

This to me looks wrong.


Output of cfdisk

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Disk: /dev/sda
              Size: 465.78 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
                         Label: dos, identifier: 0xbe369a5e

    Device       Boot       Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
    /dev/sda1    *           2048   1050623   1048576   512M  b W95 FAT32
    /dev/sda2             1052670 976771071 975718402 465.3G  5 Extended
    ├─/dev/sda5          88698880 104321023  15622144   7.5G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
>>  ├─/dev/sda6         104323072 976771071 872448000   416G 83 Linux               
    └─/dev/sda7           1052672  88696831  87644160  41.8G 83 Linux
    Free space          976771072 976773167      2096     1M


 ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
 │ Partition type: Linux (83)                                                     │
 │Filesystem UUID: 424ba2cb-8cb5-4054-a65b-48bb2f78a3ca                           │
 │     Filesystem: ext4                                                           │
 │     Mountpoint: /run/timeshift/backup (mounted)                                │
 └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
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How can I fix my system without reinstalling it?

I am very greatful for your help because otherwise I need to install all new and I am almost done with the installation.

[act29936]

Please post the results of the following command:

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lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,FSTYPE,UUID,MOUNTPOINT

[52ROSt]

@act29936

Thank you very much for your help!

Here is the output of the command you proposed.

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~$ lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,FSTYPE,UUID,MOUNTPOINT
NAME     SIZE FSTYPE UUID                                 MOUNTPOINT
sda    465.8G                                             
├─sda1   512M vfat   B71F-2751                            /boot/efi
├─sda2     1K                                             
├─sda5   7.5G swap   5680878f-b46a-4ce0-93ae-cc961254eb1a 
├─sda6   416G ext4   424ba2cb-8cb5-4054-a65b-48bb2f78a3ca 
└─sda7  41.8G ext4   3bc692cf-7c09-448e-b017-e2ba047f83e4 /
sr0     1024M   

Looking at the result, I get the impression that sda6, what should be my /home partition is not mounted at all. Is that right?

I found additionally a command, which shows the free space in a certain directory running this command shows:

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rost@ROSt-X230:~$ df /dev /home
Filesystem     1K-blocks     Used Available Use% Mounted on
udev             8011900        0   8011900   0% /dev
/dev/sda7       42872180 32872388   7792308  81% /

Next I added a 3.5 GB file into /user/Documents and ran the same command again.
user = rost

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rost@ROSt-X230:~$ df /dev /home
Filesystem     1K-blocks     Used Available Use% Mounted on
udev             8011900        0   8011900   0% /dev
/dev/sda7       42872180 36335548   4329148  90% /
rost@ROSt-X230:~$

It is to be seen that sda7, the / partition lost 3.5 GB of free space. If I am not wrong - but I am not an expert - this should also demonstrate that the /home/user is not mounted on the /home partition but under the / partition.

The same effect I found using the GNOME disk utility be deleting a 0.9 GB file from user/Video. I attach the screen shots

after deleting 0.9 GB I get

I also saw this

[pbear]

Your home partition (if you have one) is mounted per a config file called fstab. Let's see what that says. Please report the output of cat /etc/fstab.

[52ROSt]

@pbear
Thanks for looking into this matter.

here is the output of the command you proposed:

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rost@ROSt-X230:~$ cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
# / was on /dev/sda7 during installation
UUID=3bc692cf-7c09-448e-b017-e2ba047f83e4 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# /boot/efi was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=B71F-2751  /boot/efi       vfat    umask=0077      0       1
/swapfile                                 none            swap    sw              0       0
rost@ROSt-X230:

I am currently assuming that this whole trouble has to do with Timeshift. I use Timeshift for the first time on this PC. Thus I looked for alternatives to Timeshift. The GNOME disk utility seems to be able to create images of drives as well. On demand which is fine for me.

This is a screen shot I just took after a failed attempt to create an image of / partition into a subfolder of /home/user. The error message says something like the drive is currently busy and image cannot be created. I got the impression that this hast to do with the attempt to write a /partition image into a folder which is inside of /partition but not inside /home/user. After this error message, sda7 is reported in GNOME disk utility as "unmounted". Please ses also the attached screen shot.

[pbear]

As suspected, the home partition isn't mentioned in fstab. Why do you think this is Timeshift's fault? fstab would have been created at installation.

[52ROSt]

Why Timeshift - because Timeshift is not in sda6.

On the other side mounting should happen during the installation process. I do not want to exclude that I made a mistake.

Is there a chance to repair the system in the way that sda6 is properly mounted at /home and that Timeshift files are in a directory on sda6?

I appreciate your help a lot; it saves me the work of new installation from scratch!!!

I tried another command and don't understand what /run/ is good for and why it appears also in the line of /dev/sda6 ?

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rost@ROSt-X230:~$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev            7.7G     0  7.7G   0% /dev
tmpfs           1.6G  1.8M  1.6G   1% /run
/dev/sda7        41G   35G  4.2G  90% /
tmpfs           7.7G   43M  7.7G   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5.0M  4.0K  5.0M   1% /run/lock
tmpfs           7.7G     0  7.7G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs           1.6G  104K  1.6G   1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sdb1        29G   16K   29G   1% /media/rost/32GB02
/dev/sda6       409G   59G  330G  16% /run/timeshift/backup
rost@ROSt-X230:~$ 

[pbear]

FYI, no, this isn't Timeshift's fault. And the /run directory is a temporary mount, not relevant to the problem.

Here's the thing. It would be easy enough to add the home partition to fstab, but the files will still be on sda7. They can be moved - you would do that from a live session - but this is beginning to get complicated. Are you up for that? Frankly, reinstall will be easier.

If you want to proceed, please report the output of sudo parted --list and sudo blkid.

[52ROSt]

@pbear

As for Timeshift - I did not want to say the problem was caused by Timeshift - it only was for ME a possible explanation what happened. However I don' t exclude that I made a stupid mistake which I did not recognize immediately as my fault.
In the meantime I have Timeshift running on 2 PCs and the folders are nicely located parallel to the user folder. That's what I like.

As for the /home folder problem it is solved. I was lucky a very LM experienced friend helped. Nevertheless thanks a lot for starting helping me.

As for someone who might have the same problem. Don't panik. Such problems can be fixed rather easily in Linux. I am sure an expert (like @pbear) here provides all the help needed.