Mounting a 2nd HDD as home

[Stepan888]

Mounting a 2nd HDD as home.
I have tried to solve my problem by using due diligence and researching for a solution and I’m almost there! My old system had the /home directory mounted on a 2nd HDD. Everything was fine. I created clones of my /home and /root. My data is safe! I borked my system after a recent update and I couldn’t solve the problem. My root clone was kind of old, so I opted to re-install at the same time changing my user name to make it consistent with my other machines and also to install using kde. Fstab was modified as shown in this thread. My problem is that I can’t sign in as my new user name or my old user name, only as root. I can see my files in /home in a sub-directory labeled under my old user name. I suspect some sort of permission issue is preventing me from signing in as user. Manjaro has worked so smoothly for me for several years that my problem solving skills have become stale. Any and all help would be very much appreciated!

[Aragorn]

If you change your username, then that is no guarantee that you’ll still be the owner of the files. Even though the username is the indicator that the system uses to tell you who owns the files, internally it actually uses the UID. So what is important is that your UID matches that of the owner of the files.

I’ve explained it all in-depth in the tutorial below — it’s a long read, but it’s very informative and very detailed, if I say so myself.

[Tutorial] Understanding and working with UNIX filesystems and permissions

Difficulty: ★★★☆☆ Note: This post is meant as a tutorial. Please do not post on this thread regarding any problems you’re having with permissions, but start a new thread instead. Thank you. PREAMBLE: THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND If you are new to the world of GNU/Linux ─ and especially if you come from the Microsoft Windows ecosystem ─ then you will undoubtedly have already noticed that GNU/Linux handles permissions and storage volumes quite differently from what you might be used to …

[Stepan888]

Tnx for the quick reply, Aragorn. I will check out the tutorial. I’m thinking I can always reinstall again using my old user name, but I’m trying to learn from this experience. Fortunately, my data is safe!

Happy Thanksgiving!

[Stepan888]

The tutorial was a big help! I understand permissions much better now. What I ended up doing is going back to a backup from September. This was an install with the Cinnamon desktop and a 2nd HDD as home. I copied the fstab file. Then re-installed kde using the same user name. Everything is now working!

Tnx for your help, Aragorn!