I run Debian 9 on a custom computer with an intel i7 chip 8gb ram and a 1tb disk. I have another 1tb disk on the motherboard and a 20 gb removable drive. When I installed 9 all three disks appeared in /media/alaric under the disk serial number. This causes problems and I want to place each disk in a separate sub directory under /media.

I added a label to the removable drive by adding a line to fstab and the label duly appeared but all three entries in /media/alaric vanished and it now reads /media/alaric (empty) and the cdrom.

Presumably I can mount them manually as they still appear on the sidebar to the file manager but I would prefer them to be mounted at boot. I use them regularly for backing up.

I cannot now edit fstab. It is read only and neither chown nor chmod will work. I note the suggestion to use a live disk such as Knoppix or a live debian disk but I can't see why I can't just su into root. I find Knoppix a bit hard to use. I do have a live disk of Wheezy.

I have used Linux for more than 20 years, starting with Mandrake and moving to Debian when Mandriva could not run my printer. However, age is taking its toll and at 91 I find things a bit more difficult.

Alaric

It's a bit alarming that /etc/fstab cannot be written to by any means. I think that's the problem to solve. Have you tried opening fstab as root? I would try that. Or have you tried to check the permissions on the file?

Congratulations on reaching age 91!

Yes I looked at permissions. It belongs to root and I opened it as root. I am somewhat baffled as to why I could apply a label to sde1 and save it but cannot make any other changes.

I am being stupid, I think. Manually mounting the partition changes fstab. I successfully mounted two partitions on sdb but had trouble with the removable drive. In fact it did mount but showed as empty and I thought because it wasn't marked it hadn't mounted. I ran out of space on it because of the three disks originally listed under /media/alaric so the backup was trying to include writing from and to all three disks and ran out of space. I attempted to delete the contents of the disk but the contents still appeared on the file manager. The delete must have succeeded because when I finally listed the mounts it was mounted but empty.

I got a few very odd error messages and I think that confused me. Old age!

Thanks to all

Alaric

We can't help if you don't provide hard data. Show us the output of that command in post #2, the contents of fstab, and those "odd messages".
Don't tell us about them, show them verbatim.

I imagine if you add labels to the filesystem, udisks will mount them using the label rather than UUID. To get rid of the userid in the mount point will require a udev rule. It seems you could simply exclude /media from the backup, but it depends on how you have that all structured - at this juncture, only you know that.

1 members found this post helpful.

Alaric

I used to be on the mandrakeusers forum, the community one not mandrakeuser forum the official one.

so I hope my suggestions clarify in your mind some of the issues already discussed.

how did you do that?

some ways are
2) when trying to create mount points in /etc/fstab
you need to create the directory (or foldername) under /media/ using root powers

eg
3) now still in terminal show us the output as requested to these commands


4) blkid is useful to show both UUID and LABELs

eg mine is
/dev/sda1: LABEL="t1" UUID="a15fad0b-fd2d-4dab-b090-283e89e37789" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="378f30fb-01"
/dev/sda2: UUID="3cbab6cd-2b68-4d72-b1bf-9ea37f1b828f" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="378f30fb-02"
/dev/sda3: LABEL="t3" UUID="992321db-95a9-4877-ac3b-56c8eeb078c8" TYPE="ext4" PTTYPE="dos" PARTUUID="378f30fb-03"
/dev/sda4: LABEL="t4" UUID="822402a3-1910-4514-8cc0-20983a81d20a" TYPE="ext4" PTTYPE="dos" PARTUUID="378f30fb-04"


to get label= t1 on an ext4 format I do this

I know you have marked this solved as you are over whelmed with requests but we are to help.

we can do it step by step.

Sorry. As I was able to work I did not go into details. The backup problem was that I backed up /home not /home/alaric so the backup tried to back up all three disks and ran out of space.

I would have preferred to put the mount points in media but I can't mkdir as the file is read only and unchangeable, so I made the mount points in the home directory and forgot to change the backup from /home to /home/alaric.

This is the output from the various commands you ask for:

alaric@alaric:~$ su
Password:
root@alaric:/home/alaric# cd /media
root@alaric:/media# mkdir diskb
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘diskb’: Read-only file system
root@alaric:/media# chmod -Rv o+rw
chmod: missing operand after ‘o+rw’
Try 'chmod --help' for more information.
root@alaric:/media# chmod -Rv o+rw /media
chmod: changing permissions of '/media': Read-only file system
failed to change mode of '/media' from 0755 (rwxr-xr-x) to 0757 (rwxr-xrwx)
chmod: changing permissions of '/media/alaric': Read-only file system
failed to change mode of '/media/alaric' from 0750 (rwxr-x---) to 0756 (rwxr-xrw-)
chmod: changing permissions of '/media/cdrom0': Read-only file system
failed to change mode of '/media/cdrom0' from 0755 (rwxr-xr-x) to 0757 (rwxr-xrwx)
neither symbolic link '/media/cdrom' nor referent has been changed
root@alaric:/media# cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# / was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=3ea92e46-b83c-4f32-b29c-21894cbffd23 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /boot was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=b6f867e4-9daa-45eb-927f-64e69dd43879 /boot ext2 defaults 0 2
# /home was on /dev/sda11 during installation
UUID=332b0a0a-1bb0-42bd-946d-77bcf4ac78c7 /home ext4 defaults 0 2
# /opt was on /dev/sda7 during installation
UUID=b4a01e8e-72af-4e57-a479-6b5834678d29 /opt ext4 defaults 0 2
# /tmp was on /dev/sda9 during installation
UUID=07f013d4-64e1-47e3-bce2-12141970c017 /tmp ext4 defaults 0 2
# /usr was on /dev/sda6 during installation
UUID=f68fe3d3-47ec-4107-92ba-996d2c3aba97 /usr ext4 defaults 0 2
# /var was on /dev/sda8 during installation
UUID=5bf295d1-7c51-497e-9fe0-e862053d12dc /var ext4 defaults 0 2
# swap was on /dev/sda10 during installation
UUID=a8095dba-6723-40ce-9009-0d81aa1bccc3 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/sr0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
UUID=9ecfe6fd-0751-4279-98b9-fac0dae52a40 /bakup29g ext4 relatime 0 2
root@alaric:/media# ls -al /media
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Jun 21 19:33 .
drwxr-xr-x 23 root root 4096 Jul 28 10:53 ..
drwxr-x---+ 2 root root 4096 Jul 28 10:54 alaric
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 Jun 21 18:51 cdrom -> cdrom0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 21 18:51 cdrom0
root@alaric:/media# e2label /dev/cde1
e2label: No such file or directory while trying to open /dev/cde1
Couldn't find valid filesystem superblock.
root@alaric:/media# e2label /dev/sde1

root@alaric:/media# ls /media/alaric
root@alaric:/media# blkid
/dev/sdb2: UUID="FE087D04087CBCE9" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="8e23335d-02"
/dev/sdb3: UUID="092143f0-8a79-41b5-a9d0-7ddcf05a7b51" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="8e23335d-03"
/dev/sda1: UUID="b6f867e4-9daa-45eb-927f-64e69dd43879" TYPE="ext2" PARTUUID="a0efbc3d-01"
/dev/sda5: UUID="3ea92e46-b83c-4f32-b29c-21894cbffd23" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="a0efbc3d-05"
/dev/sda6: UUID="f68fe3d3-47ec-4107-92ba-996d2c3aba97" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="a0efbc3d-06"
/dev/sda7: UUID="b4a01e8e-72af-4e57-a479-6b5834678d29" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="a0efbc3d-07"
/dev/sda8: UUID="5bf295d1-7c51-497e-9fe0-e862053d12dc" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="a0efbc3d-08"
/dev/sda9: UUID="07f013d4-64e1-47e3-bce2-12141970c017" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="a0efbc3d-09"
/dev/sda10: UUID="a8095dba-6723-40ce-9009-0d81aa1bccc3" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="a0efbc3d-0a"
/dev/sda11: UUID="332b0a0a-1bb0-42bd-946d-77bcf4ac78c7" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="a0efbc3d-0b"
/dev/sdb1: LABEL="System Reserved" UUID="10A47B9CA47B82D0" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="8e23335d-01"
/dev/sdd1: PARTUUID="24a9026b-01"
/dev/sde1: UUID="9ecfe6fd-0751-4279-98b9-fac0dae52a40" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="511d8967-01"
root@alaric:/media# e2label /dev/sde1 tl
root@alaric:/media# mount
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,nosuid,relatime,size=4017252k,nr_inodes=1004313,mode=755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,size=805700k,mode=755)
/dev/sda5 on / type ext4 (ro,relatime,errors=remount-ro,data=ordered)
/dev/sda6 on /usr type ext4 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)
securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
tmpfs on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=5120k)
tmpfs on /sys/fs/cgroup type tmpfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,mode=755)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,xattr,release_agent=/lib/systemd/systemd-cgroups-agent,name=systemd)
pstore on /sys/fs/pstore type pstore (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,blkio)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/devices type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,devices)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu,cpuacct type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,cpu,cpuacct)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/pids type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,pids)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/perf_event type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,perf_event)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,freezer)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/net_cls,net_prio type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,net_cls,net_prio)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,cpuset)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/memory type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,memory)
systemd-1 on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type autofs (rw,relatime,fd=37,pgrp=1,timeout=0,minproto=5,maxproto=5,direct,pipe_ino=10056)
debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw,relatime)
mqueue on /dev/mqueue type mqueue (rw,relatime)
hugetlbfs on /dev/hugepages type hugetlbfs (rw,relatime)
sunrpc on /run/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw,relatime)
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext2 (rw,relatime,block_validity,barrier,user_xattr,acl)
/dev/sda8 on /var type ext4 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)
/dev/sda9 on /tmp type ext4 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)
/dev/sda11 on /home type ext4 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)
/dev/sda7 on /opt type ext4 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw,relatime)
tmpfs on /run/user/1000 type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,size=805696k,mode=700,uid=1000,gid=1000)
gvfsd-fuse on /run/user/1000/gvfs type fuse.gvfsd-fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=1000)
/dev/sdb2 on /home/ntfs14g type fuseblk (rw,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,allow_other,blksize=4096)
/dev/sdb3 on /home/diskb type ext4 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)
/dev/sde1 on /bakup29g type ext4 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)
/dev/sde1 on /home/removable type ext4 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)
root@alaric:/media# ^C
root@alaric:/media#

Sorry the output from the terminal is a mess but I don't know how to edit it.

Just wrap [code] ... [/code] tags around the whole lot - much easier to read.

Yes I backup daily and verify it. The post about code tags is beyond me. I am not a ptogrammer and don't know how to do that.

I forgot to mention that I loaded Kwrite, gedit and nona? as superuser. I assume they were working in root but I wouldn't know how to check.

Alaric

ok lets re-write some of your reply and confirm if that is what you understand is what you really want?

/dev/sda1 /boot
sda2/3/4 not shown (one of them will be the extended partition)
sda5 /
sda6 /usr
sda7 /opt
sda8 /var
sda9 /tmp
sda10 swap
sda11 /home/

--- sde1 /home/removable

sdb1 unknown likely to be a windows hidden partition?
sdb2 unknown ntfs
sdb3 not showing in fstab....ext4

###################################################################

2) then lets not use /media at all.

try this instead


##################################

3) I think personally we should disconnect the mount point /home/removable and give it a simple mount point

but more info is required.

Were you actually trying to make this removable drive read/writeable to the local user Alaric?

If so we can still do that in fstab

let me give an example only with a label change and a fstab change

in fstab which is opened with root powers we add a new line at bottom of fstab so last line read

#######################################################

but you seem to have a problem with /backup29g

your fstab entry reads as
UUID=9ecfe6fd-0751-4279-98b9-fac0dae52a40 /bakup29g ext4 relatime 0 2

that means if you ls / (you must see bakup29g) and I suspect you never made directory?

let me know if we need to break this down in bits

also......I am really tempted to suggest you don't need so many linux partitions. But that is your choice.

edit
this appears to be your removable drive based on UUID and you delete line for /backup29g from your fstab if you wish to test out my removable line in fstab

good luck

Thanks for your suggestions. mkdir in root returns:

alaric@alaric:~$ su
Password:
root@alaric:/home/alaric# mkdir /diskb
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘/diskb’: Read-only file system

chmod returns an error : operation not permitted. There does not appear to be any other directory than /home to which I can write. Kwrite in superuser mode will not save anything to fstab. The error message says the file is read only and chmod does not work on it, the same message 'Operation not permitted.' I agree that /home is not a good place for mount points but what else?

I set up the partitions following suggestions in an article some years ago in Linux Magazine. Previous installations of Debian worked allowing the installation programme to do the partitioning. However, an update of Wheezy did not work. As soon as the installation was complete and I looked at the file system there was an error message that /root was full. I tried guided partitioning but could not increase the size of /root so I followed the advice in the article but allowing 100gb for /root instead of the 10gb suggested. My root partition contains a little over 30gb.

I use OpenOffice which installs by default in /opt. I know you can override this but the installation process is so much of a bind that I prefer not to tinker with it. I have used OpenOffice since, I think, version 1.1 and the latest version has the same problem 1.1 had. It saves keyboard shortcuts, auto correct, etc to a file with root privileges so trying to save a keyboard shortcut crashes the programme. I have changed the path of templates, auto corrections etc. to overcome this but keyboard appears to be saved to the programme file and unless I can change the permissions for the actual programme the problem is probably fatal. I can use LibreOffice instead but OpenOffice has a better help system and can do some things LibreOffice can't.

Thanks for your advice and help. The present mount points work and I had better leave well alone. By the way, I did not create a directory bakup29g but the system did. It is a subdirectory under /

Regards
Alaric

Ok I am not asking for a link to that magazine.

the fact that as root you can not create a directory under / is a concern for me, it may not be a concern for you.

There is a possibility that you have not installed an install version of Debian but some kind of live system which requires "persistence"
and read write directories only exist in some parts of that structure.

to see if that is possible can you provide a download link to the actual debian version you installed please?

the one I am guessing you may have used is this type
https://www.debian.org/CD/live/

but there are derivatives of debian that are meant to be installed to an usb stick etc with persistence of "home" files only

2) also can you show the output to this command

I will show mine.....not that I want you to obey me but to illustrate that most directories are read writeable

ls -al /
total 112
drwxr-xr-x 25 root root 4096 Jul 28 12:09 .
drwxr-xr-x 25 root root 4096 Jul 28 12:09 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 28 17:12 bin
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jul 28 12:09 boot
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 31 16:12 cdrom
drwxr-xr-x 19 root root 4140 Jul 30 14:31 dev
drwxr-xr-x 133 root root 12288 Jul 28 17:12 etc
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 May 31 16:17 home
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 33 Jul 28 12:09 initrd.img -> boot/initrd.img-4.10.0-28-generic
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 33 Jul 25 12:20 initrd.img.old -> boot/initrd.img-4.10.0-27-generic
drwxr-xr-x 21 root root 4096 Jun 8 17:58 lib
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 30 17:46 lib64
drwx------ 2 root root 16384 May 31 16:09 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jun 8 14:40 media
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 30 19:49 mnt
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 30 19:49 opt
dr-xr-xr-x 183 root root 0 Jul 30 14:31 proc
drwx------ 4 root root 4096 Jul 27 19:28 root
drwxr-xr-x 26 root root 840 Jul 30 14:32 run
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 12288 Jul 28 17:12 sbin
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr 29 16:38 snap
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 30 19:49 srv
dr-xr-xr-x 13 root root 0 Jul 30 14:31 sys
drwxr-xr-x 10 gordon users 4096 Jul 28 11:46 t4
drwxrwxrwt 11 root root 4096 Jul 30 14:37 tmp
drwxr-xr-x 11 root root 4096 Jul 25 12:56 usr
drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 4096 May 30 20:06 var
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 30 Jul 28 12:09 vmlinuz -> boot/vmlinuz-4.10.0-28-generic
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 30 Jul 25 12:20 vmlinuz.old -> boot/vmlinuz-4.10.0-27-generi

as you can see all are owned by root and have permission of read write with the exception of t4 which I set up in my fstab to be owned by me

Here is the output:

deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 9.0.0 _Stretch_ - Official amd64 NETINST 20170617-13:06]/ stretch main

#deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 9.0.0 _Stretch_ - Official amd64 NETINST 20170617-13:06]/ stretch main

deb http://ftp.nz.debian.org/debian/ stretch main
deb-src http://ftp.nz.debian.org/debian/ stretch main

deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates main

# stretch-updates, previously known as 'volatile'
deb http://ftp.nz.debian.org/debian/ stretch-updates main
deb-src http://ftp.nz.debian.org/debian/ stretch-updates main

alaric@alaric:~$ ls -al /
total 96
drwxr-xr-x 23 root root 4096 Jul 28 10:53 .
drwxr-xr-x 23 root root 4096 Jul 28 10:53 ..
drwxrwxrwx 48 alaric alaric 4096 Jul 29 08:12 bakup29g
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 24 09:29 bin
drwxr-xrwx 4 root root 4096 Jul 24 09:30 boot
drwxr-xrwx 19 root root 3660 Jul 29 10:45 dev
drwxr-xr-x 133 root root 12288 Jul 28 10:54 etc
drwxr-xrwx 7 root root 4096 Jul 29 10:25 home
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 29 Jun 21 18:55 initrd.img -> boot/initrd.img-4.9.0-3-amd64
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 29 Jun 21 18:55 initrd.img.old -> boot/initrd.img-4.9.0-3-amd64
drwxr-xr-x 17 root root 4096 Jun 21 20:11 lib
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 21 19:00 lib64
drwx------ 2 root root 16384 Jun 21 18:51 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Jun 21 19:33 media
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 21 18:52 mnt
drwxr-xrwx 4 root root 4096 Jul 15 11:16 opt
dr-xr-xrwx 242 root root 0 Jul 28 22:53 proc
drwx------ 9 root root 4096 Jul 25 20:49 root
drwxr-xrwx 29 root root 920 Jul 28 13:18 run
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 24 09:29 sbin
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 21 18:52 srv
dr-xr-xrwx 13 root root 0 Jul 30 16:24 sys
drwxrwxrwt 19 root root 4096 Jul 31 07:30 tmp
drwxr-xrwx 11 root root 4096 Jun 21 18:52 usr
drwxr-xrwx 13 root root 4096 Jun 21 19:09 var
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 26 Jun 21 18:55 vmlinuz -> boot/vmlinuz-4.9.0-3-amd64
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 26 Jun 21 18:55 vmlinuz.old -> boot/vmlinuz-4.9.0-3-amd64
alaric@alaric:~$

I remember now that I should have added to the sources list contrib and something else that I can't remember. The mirror is the one recommended during the installation.

The cd shows Debian 9.0.0 amd64 n My memory is not what it was. I assume I would have downloaded the file and burned it to a cd for the installation but I can't find anything in my /Download that I recognize as Debian.

If I have to re-install a new version, which partitions don't I need? I assume that /boot /root and /usr are essential. I have never selected the option of a single partition which appears to me to pose risks. Have I done something wrong with mount so that the partitions are mounted read only?

Sorry to cause all this trouble.

Alaric

ahhh there is the problem, I missed it earlier

[quote](from mount)
/dev/sda5 on / type ext4 (ro,relatime,errors=remount-ro,data=ordered)

(but fstab line appears OK
UUID=3ea92e46-b83c-4f32-b29c-21894cbffd23 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1

which means that one or more of your partitions, not being found correctly is causing / to mount as read only

so can you confirm that /back29g is the same as /home/removable

you can see that both /back29g and /home/removable are on /dev/sde1

##########################################################

you do not need back29g or home/removable mountable on boot

my suggestion is boot up a live cd

depending on whether /dev/sda5 is auto mounted by that live cd
use root powers to remove all entries in /etc/fstab for those 2 entries
full reboot and re-check that mount that / is now mounted as rw and not ro

#####################################

here is one simple way to mount the live cd /dev/sda5

boot it up

depending on which live cd you have, you can then use either a GUI text editor with root powers to edit
/tmp/etc/fstab or use a terminal text editor like
nano

let me know which live cds you have as I know a few.

the net install debian is not a live cd

PS it is not a problem, we are here to try and help at Linuxquestions

I have a live Wheezy disk and Knoppix. back29g and /home/removable are the same. back29g was produced by the system. I edited fstab to make back29g a label for sde1. Apparently that created the directory under / . I don't know how I could do that one entry to fstab as I couldn't make any other changes.

ok boot knoppix, it should boot into a GUI environment LXDE

which also has a few web browsers and a gui text editor
iceweasel or chromium for browser
leafpad for text editor

http://www.wp-schulz.de/images/downl..._77/kn-whp.lst

open a terminal and try this

lets review your fstab
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# / was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=3ea92e46-b83c-4f32-b29c-21894cbffd23 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /boot was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=b6f867e4-9daa-45eb-927f-64e69dd43879 /boot ext2 defaults 0 2
# /home was on /dev/sda11 during installation
UUID=332b0a0a-1bb0-42bd-946d-77bcf4ac78c7 /home ext4 defaults 0 2
# /opt was on /dev/sda7 during installation
UUID=b4a01e8e-72af-4e57-a479-6b5834678d29 /opt ext4 defaults 0 2
# /tmp was on /dev/sda9 during installation
UUID=07f013d4-64e1-47e3-bce2-12141970c017 /tmp ext4 defaults 0 2
# /usr was on /dev/sda6 during installation
UUID=f68fe3d3-47ec-4107-92ba-996d2c3aba97 /usr ext4 defaults 0 2
# /var was on /dev/sda8 during installation
UUID=5bf295d1-7c51-497e-9fe0-e862053d12dc /var ext4 defaults 0 2
# swap was on /dev/sda10 during installation
UUID=a8095dba-6723-40ce-9009-0d81aa1bccc3 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/sr0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
UUID=9ecfe6fd-0751-4279-98b9-fac0dae52a40 /bakup29g ext4 relatime 0 2

simply delete that last line
save the file and exit leafpad

2) staying in the root terminal delete the dir /back29g

3) now delete that home dir for backup, staying in the root powered terminal

in the terminal run the "reboot" command or exit terminal and
reboot

on reboot into debian re-run the mount command....we like to see / show up as rw and no longer ro

good luck