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I have an Ubuntu/Windows 10 dualboot machine. I recently tried moving my home directory to a different partition, /dev/sda8. At first, everything worked fine. Then, when I tried to boot into Ubuntu, it didn't work and I got into emergency mode. From there, it appears that /home is not mounted:

root@ubuntu:/# ls -a /home
. ..

So I try to mount it again with mount /dev/sda8 /home. Nothing happens. No error message, and when I look again. there is still no data under /home. Now the curious thing: When I do this:

root@ubuntu:/# mkdir someotherdirectory
root@ubuntu:/# mount /dev/sda8 /someotherdirectory
root@ubuntu:/# ls someotherdirectory
quacodas  lost+found

everything is there. So what is so special about the home directory and why can't I mount my partition there?

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  • Is /home empty? If it is not it cannot be used as a mount point. Could there be something in the startup that finds that there is no user home and creates one before /home is mounted? Also, If you are the only user, you could try to mount that partition as /home/{your_id}.
    – xenoid
    Aug 29, 2019 at 19:19

2 Answers 2

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If the partition is mountable by Windows, you have to make sure that Windows is completely shutdown when your boot Linux (modern Windows rarely shutdowns completely), or explicitly unmount it on Windows before switching to Linux, otherwise the partition is still marked mounted by Windows, and Linux won't mount it.

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  • Thanks for the tip, however I don't think that's the cause. I haven't started Windows since that particular partition was created. Also, it's an ext4 partition, which Windows doesn't support and as I said, I'm able to mount it to other directories, just not /home
    – quacodas
    Aug 29, 2019 at 17:44
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I solved it now. I had to edit the /etc/fstab file, which I forgot. I replaced the entry for the old /home partition with the partition which I actually wanted. That did the trick.

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