Fresh install : /home content missing

[Dark Star]

I just installed Sabayon 4.1 Gnome along with Mandriva 2009.1 . The problem is I made a common /home for both. I shared MDV /home with Sabayon installation while partitioning while I didn't formatted it.

The problem is :

1. I had lots of content in /home. It is showing that /home has some space utilized but is not showing the content..

I even unhide the file but to no avail

Please help ..

Regards

[micia]

You are not able to see the contents even using a console?
Something like (as root):

Code: Select all

ls -aR /home


(probably it would be better to use this command without 'R' and in one directory at a time)

[EDIT:] I'd use it as root, because I think it could be some permissions problem.

[Dark Star]

Will try that, just noticed this

Why in the world sabayon created a new /home ? and pushed the contents in a backup home ?

[micia]

I think it was the default behavior of Sabayon 4.1,
as far as I know the installer has been improved regarding existing home directories in the latest release.

Keep in mind that sharing the same home directory may cause a lot of troubles.

[thecata]

actually, you can use the same /home partition on several distributions, but is highly unrecommended to use the same users on all of them... in other words, you can have user1 on mandriva and user2 on sabayon with absolutely no problems whatsoever, but using the same username is almost surely going to cause problems since a lot of important files which are stored in your home directory might be overwritten by the other distribution

EDIT: on second thoughts, using the same /home partition may cause problems after all even if you use different users... since there are some users that each distribution creates (such as ftp and p2p I can see in your screenshot).. depending on the combination of distros you are using, troubles might occur after all

[totedati]

you should check also for cascading home mount partition in another home partition ...

if in mandriva your home partition is mounted at /home then in sabayon is another home partition mounted at /home/you_username then mandriva home content is hidden when you use you sabayonlinux home even both have the same /home/you_username path!

man mount

mount -t type device dir
This tells the kernel to attach the file system found on device (which is of type type) at the directory dir. The previous contents (if any) and owner and mode of dir become invisible, and as long as this file system remains mounted, the pathname dir refers to the root of the file system on device.

Will try that, just noticed this

Why in the world sabayon created a new /home ? and pushed the contents in a backup home ?

is so obvious why not no? is a safety measure, i think ... try to recover an old file, overwritten or deleted in linux, and you see why! better to have all old content pushed back in a backup dir, then at you first login you simply play with a copy ... i am not sure why this copy is ... empty ... is no need to be empty! just a copy of you old home dir ...

[Thev00d00]

It is done for saftey, the installler will install some files in your home dir to make sure everything works as it should. So we move the old dir and create a new one. I recently reinstalled and just renamed the backup back to v00d00 and it worked great with all my settings.

I add that while a shared home sounds good, a shared home partition is recommended, as shared home dirs have the ability to cause all kinds of headaches.

[lxnay]

This issue has been addressed in Sabayon 4.2