[SOLVED] Two Home Directories.

[laidlaws]

I have done it again! Trying to dual boot Mga9 with Windows.
Because I had updated Windows, some folders had new UUIDs, and Mageia couldn't find them. I tried to make them read by /dev/sd* as a temporary measure.
When I rebooted, my entry for /home didn't work, and my system booted with /home/ but no /home/doug.KI didn't want to rename /home as /home/doug. When I changed directory to /home, there was no subdirectory for doug, so I created one.

Now, I have two directories called doug, but only one entry in the indexes, and I cannot choose which one to navigate to. One of them is a brand new empty directory, with only the entries from /etc/skel. The other is the copy I want to keep. I recollect reading somewhere that I can distinguish them with UUIDs, but I can't remember the details.

[Germ]

open a terminal. As root:

Code: Select all

blkid

or:

Code: Select all

ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/

[laidlaws]

Thanks. blkid haddn't crossed my mind. A similar program is to copy a directory or device complete with its UUID. The solution for that should be much the same.

[laidlaws]

I misread the symptoms The commands you gave me made it plain that there was only one /home directory, the backup I wanted to restore. The real problem was that the backup was inside anothrer folder, also called "doug" and I had tried to download the outer one. have just finishede installing from the correct innerarchive,and everything came together beautifully. Even a loop by the login dialog was fixed.
I will add your suggestion to my "Tips and "Hints" as a resource.

[Germ]

Glad you got it sorted.