Not a question---case of the missing /home partition data
When I installed Debian (Progeny), I used hda6 for /home and
hdb5 for / and later, a directory /da6 under /mnt
Everything seemed to work very nicely but I was puzzled why I
couldn't see /home's data when I went directly to hda6. All
I saw was ./ ../
So,
I ran the following to see what happens to /dev/hda6 (which is
mounted in /home) when data is added or removed from /home
progeny:/home# df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdb5 2782920 1204164 1437388 46% /
/dev/hda6 1241220 27788 1150380 3% /home
progeny:/home# mkdir haha
progeny: home# df (watch what happens to /dev/hda6)
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdb5 2782920 1204164 1437388 46% /
/dev/hda6 1241220 27792 1150376 3% /home
progeny:/home# rmdir haha
progeny: home# df (again-----see /dev/hda6)
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdb5 2782920 1204164 1437388 46% /
/dev/hda6 1241220 27788 1150380 3% /home
(It's evident that when data is added or removed from /home,
it affects dev/hda6 but not /dev/hdb5
Next-switch to access hda6 directly and create a directory 'zits'
progeny:/home# mount -t ext2 /dev/hda6 /mnt/da6; cd /mnt/da6; ls -aF
--color=auto
./ ../
progeny:/mnt/da6# df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdb5 2782920 1204212 1437340 46% /
/dev/hda6 1241220 27788 1150380 3% /home
progeny:/mnt/da6# mkdir zits
progeny:/mnt/da6# ls -aF --color=auto
./ ../ zits
progeny:/mnt/da6# df (look for the changes)
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdb5 2782920 1204216 1437336 46% /
/dev/hda6 1241220 27788 1150380 3% /home
Next--'zits' removed from hda6
progeny:/mnt/da6# rmdir zits
progeny:/mnt/da6# df (again--check the changes)
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdb5 2782920 1204212 1437340 46% /
/dev/hda6 1241220 27788 1150380 3% /home
progeny:/mnt/da6#
Notice that when data was sent directly to hda6, it had no
effect on /dev/hda6's df status. Instead, the change
occurred in the root directory, /dev/hdb5.
From this, my eventual conclusion is that it's the method
I use to access hda6 that prevents seeing /home data in hda6.
Breaking it down, the steps are:
#mount -t ext2 /dev/hda6 /mnt/da6 (da6 is in /mnt)
#cd /mnt/da6
#ls -aF --color=auto
./ ../ (no sign of /home data)
No wonder!----hda6 has been diverted away from /home to /mnt/da6.
I had trapped myself into a misconception that /mnt/da6 and /home
should have the same data.
Just to verify my conclusion, I went to /mnt/da6 and did
/mnt/da6 # mkdir stupid
Then I ran my routine to examine the contents of hda6 and what
I saw was the contents of /mnt/da6
./ ../ stupid ( I'm leaving that in /mnt/da6 as a reminder)
Case solved!!! My routine to access hda6 to see /home's data is
wrong .. it accesses /mnt/da6, instead. Everything had been working fine
from the start. I just couldn't understand why I couldn't see /home's
data in hda6.
If you want to see what's in /home's partition hda6, look at /home.
I suppose the same reasoning could be applied to any additional
partitions that were created for system root directories.
My excuse? See my /mnt/da6/, above.
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