[SOLVED] Slackware/Ubuntu machine /home/_ folder?

Vi3GameHkr · 01-08-2011, 07:53 PM

I've got a machine running Slackware64 13.1, and Ubuntu 10.10 32-bit, and today, while installing python-ogre in Ubuntu, I was informed that I had run out of hard drive space on my /home partition.

The /home partition is shared between Slack and Ubuntu, and just earlier today, upon booting into Ubuntu, I got a message that the /home partition couldn't be mounted (before most of the system had loaded. It was still on the purple loading screen) Well simply rebooting fixed this. Then today I suddenly ran out of space, and I thought I was only about half way through the allotted space. Well after some investigation I discovered a folder called /home/_ which was an exact duplicate of /home. Well in need of some extra hard drive space, and in conclusion that it was unneeded, I deleted it. And when I deleted it, everything in /home deleted as well.

First off, what is this /home/_ folder? Where could it have come from? The creation time is about 7 minutes after I created a new user on Slackware, and I think it might have been about 7 minutes after creating that user that I had changed its home directory so that Ubuntu's user config files wouldn't conflict with Slackware's.

Secondly, why did /home's contents delete when I removed /home/_? I already figured out there isn't any way of recovering those files (except for the files I luckily synced with Dropbox)

Third, is there some way to prevent this from happening again? Does anyone have any experience with this? Has anyone heard of this happening before? I already know that /home/_ was not a symbolic link.

Vi3GameHkr · 01-08-2011, 09:26 PM

While I feel like I just thoroughly screwed up my system, I have succeeded in 1) getting Compiz to work, which was not working for the LIFE of me after so many trips to the IRC channel, a very confusing forum thread and lots of headaches, and 2) finally cleaning out my /home folder

I still have a /home/_ folder though, and it actually ISN'T taking up any extra space (weird?)

barriehie · 01-08-2011, 11:33 PM

So when you installed the 2nd linux system you gave it the partition that /home was on via the first install??? I've seen existing mountpoints with an appended underscore. It happens with my /media/backup dir. If the external drive isn't on the backup script will mount /media/backup_ to save the backup to. No solution but I've seen your issues...

Vi3GameHkr · 01-10-2011, 02:40 PM

It's not appended, there is a separate folder in /home named _, so in effect I have /home/vi3 and /home/_/vi3 both with the exact same contents. If I delete /home/_/vi3/ then /home/vi3/ is also deleted, and /home/_ doesn't take up any extra space. The real issue is that when I use locate, it finds every file in my /home folder twice, one from /home/vi3 and one from /home/_/vi3

Rul · 01-10-2011, 03:23 PM

Hello.

Does this happen both in Ubuntu and Slackware?

markush · 01-10-2011, 03:43 PM

Hello,

I'm dualbooting Slackware64-current, Slackware-13.1 and Gentoo. I'd strongly recommend not to use one and the same /home directory for multiple distributions.

The reason is, that you have different configurationfiles for (often) different program-versions.

My solution is to create a /home partition for every distribution. This partitions have a size of about 8GB. I have a big partition of 60GB which I mount in /usr/local/public for every distribution, here are additional directories for my users (myself

)

Here my output of df -h

Code:

Dateisystem           Size  Used Avail Use% Eingehängt auf
/dev/sda5              35G   14G   20G  42% /
udev                   10M  320K  9,7M   4% /dev
/dev/sda13            7,9G  5,4G  2,2G  72% /home
/dev/sda11             50G   19G   28G  41% /usr/local/public
/dev/sda6              35G   13G   21G  38% /usr/local/slackware64
/dev/sda9              35G  9,3G   24G  29% /usr/local/slackware
/dev/sda14             42G   16G   24G  41% /usr/local/vbox
/dev/sda12            9,9G  1,2G  8,2G  13% /usr/local/lfs
shm                   2,0G     0  2,0G   0% /dev/shm

in /usr/local/public I have directories "Documents", "Downloads" for which there are symbolic links in the respective homedirectory.

Markus

Rul · 01-10-2011, 04:11 PM

I agree with you, markus, it's a good solution. In fact, I use exactly the same organization. Nevertheless, Vi3GameHkr's problem is far deeper than configuration files overlapping.
Just as Vi3GameHkr, I've got Ubuntu and Slackware on the same box. Not so long ago I've a similar problem with the /home partition. My bet was that Nautilus does not live very well with the /etc/fstab file. My dirty solution was to remove the /home entry from Slackware's /etc/fstab, and let Nautilus do it's magic.
I don't know if my problem was the same than Vi3GameHkr, that's why I insist in knowing if this thing happens both in Ubuntu and Slackware.

markush · 01-10-2011, 04:20 PM

Well, I'm not an expert for Ubuntu, but I swear that Slackware doesn't do anything which root doesn't want to do. So I think you're right and the conclusion is that one has to search for the problem in Ubuntu.

Markus

barriehie · 01-10-2011, 05:59 PM

+1 only because 'buggy' is why I left Ubuntu after a year of use; could've been me or the hardware but Debian hasn't so much as hiccuped running on the same box...

Quote:

Originally Posted by markush

Well, I'm not an expert for Ubuntu, but I swear that Slackware doesn't do anything which root doesn't want to do. So I think you're right and the conclusion is that one has to search for the problem in Ubuntu.

Markus

Vi3GameHkr · 01-11-2011, 01:45 PM

Markus, I actually realized within the past month that I will need to change my file system sometime soon. I think that's an excellent scheme. Thanks.

Rul, the /home/_ folder does show up in Slackware, but nothing is in it. I'm building a new system in a couple of months, so I'll live with this for now, although I think I can pretty clearly see that the problem is related to sharing /home with both systems.

Thanks.