[SOLVED] Home folder duplicated in /

Tom9753 · 2024-02-24 07:13:15

I have tried looking for the answer to this, this is concerning a new install using archinstall and the best-effort default partition layout. I have 2 devices: a 97GB home drive in /home and a 20 GB / drive. The / drive also has a home folder in it and everything I save in /home is duplicate there. Therefore the / drive is rapidly becoming full. Is this standard for the system? Plus, what should I do about it?

The output of df -h is:

[tom@archlinux ~]$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
dev 6.8G 0 6.8G 0% /dev
run 6.8G 1.5M 6.8G 1% /run
efivarfs 128K 26K 98K 21% /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
/dev/sdb2 20G 6.1G 13G 33% /
tmpfs 6.8G 0 6.8G 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 6.8G 4.0K 6.8G 1% /tmp
/dev/sdb1 511M 73M 439M 15% /boot
/dev/sdb3 97G 397M 92G 1% /home
tmpfs 1.4G 68K 1.4G 1% /run/user/1000
[tom@archlinux ~]$

Thanks in advance

Last edited by Tom9753 (2024-02-24 09:01:13)

seth · 2024-02-24 07:28:03

You're mounting sdb3 into /home - stuff you write to /home will end up on that partition, not sdb2
Boot the rescue.target (2nd link below), make sure sdb3 nor anything else is mounted into /home

mount | grep home

and inspect /home (now the mountpoint on root partition, not the mounted partition) - are there any files in there?

In future please use [code][/code] tags.

Tom9753 · 2024-02-24 07:59:27

Hi,
Thank you for the reply.

$ mount | grep home
/dev/sdb3 on /home type ext4 (rw,relatime)

/home is on sdb3 as you said but sdb2 also has a /home folder which contains /lost+found and a complete copy of everything in my user folder on sdb3 /username.

seth · 2024-02-24 08:04:07

That is virtually impossible and if there's a "lost+found " in "/home" and also you're looking at that directory while, as in your post, mount suggests that sdb3 is mounted there, you're looking at sdb3
If you want to know the contents of /home while sdb3 isn't mounted there you'll have to unmount it and then "ls /home" - but you cannot unmount /home from the multi-user or graphical targets (certainly not when using some more elaborate DE and it's also not a good idea if you're logged in as non-root at all)

Ftr, you /do/ have a basic understanding of the concept of mounting filesystems?

Tom9753 · 2024-02-24 08:20:44

OK my apologies for my confusion. When I open sdb2 I see a home folder (as well as all the other folders). When I open that folder it goes to sdb3. sdb3 is mounted in sdb2? Therefore, is this the regular layout of Arch?

seth · 2024-02-24 08:34:08

This is the regular layout of POSIX systems
You don't "open" partitions, like you "open" drives (C:, D:, …) on windows.

There's a directory tree, it starts at / and everything else is a subnode to that.
/home is a directory on the root partition, but it's only function (by choice) to to act as a mountpoint for another partition - the root node of that partition (sdb3) then becomes /home
You could also mount sdb3 (again) to /mnt/sdb3 and then /home and /mnt/sdb3 would reflect the very same data, residing on sdb3 and you can even bind mount directories into other places.

It allows for a highly transparent and flexible layout, because the upper layers of the system don't have to care about any of this - they deal with a simple directory tree - however that is composed.

Assuming you're dual-booting, 3rd link below. Mandatory.
Disable it (it's NOT the BIOS setting!) and reboot windows and linux twice for voodo reasons.

Tom9753 · 2024-02-24 08:47:35

Thank you very much for your assistance, your explanation and for clearing up my confusion. The question is solved.

Last edited by Tom9753 (2024-02-24 08:49:18)

seth · 2024-02-24 08:54:08

Please mark resolved threads by editing your initial posts subject - so others will know that there's no task left, but maybe a solution to find.
Thanks.

Arch Linux

#1 2024-02-24 07:13:15

[SOLVED] Home folder duplicated in /

#2 2024-02-24 07:28:03

Re: [SOLVED] Home folder duplicated in /

#3 2024-02-24 07:59:27

Re: [SOLVED] Home folder duplicated in /

#4 2024-02-24 08:04:07

Re: [SOLVED] Home folder duplicated in /

#5 2024-02-24 08:20:44

Re: [SOLVED] Home folder duplicated in /

#6 2024-02-24 08:34:08

Re: [SOLVED] Home folder duplicated in /

#7 2024-02-24 08:47:35

Re: [SOLVED] Home folder duplicated in /

#8 2024-02-24 08:54:08

Re: [SOLVED] Home folder duplicated in /

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