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SleePyCode · Nov 3, 2007, 02:07 PM

After I upgraded from 10.4.10 to 10.5 I lost my directory in my hard drive called "home"

After attempting to delete it so I can start over and rebuild things again (it contained my test server file) I discovered it wouldn't let me delete it. Using the upgrade CD I ran terminal and attempted to delete it., only to discover it wasn't empty. It actually had all the files. So I moved all of the files to my user folder so I could delete the other folder.

Well after some playing around I still can't get rid of it. I can't figure out where or why it exists still.
Anyone have an idea? I also see a drive called net but its empty as well.

I haven't used bootcamp yet or anything so I know it couldn't be that. It doesn't appear in the /Volumes folder either

I attached some pictures if it helps, I can't figure it out. I have rescued the data from the /home folder though that I thought was lost.

besson3c · Nov 3, 2007, 04:45 PM

What was "home" originally? Was it an alias of symbolic link to your home directory?

TETENAL · Nov 3, 2007, 06:50 PM

Everybody has the home directory in Leopard. It's one of those (usually hidden) standard Unix stuff folders. I don't know what it's for, but it's supposed to be there.

besson3c · Nov 3, 2007, 07:36 PM

Ahhh.. you're right Tetenal.

My guess is that this was put there to satisfy some Unix apps that are looking for the home directory in there, because most Unix systems use "home" for storing home directories while OS X uses "Users".

You should be able to delete and recreate /home (chmod 555), it should be empty.

SleePyCode · Nov 4, 2007, 12:47 AM

so /home should be a directory pointing to my users account?

Doesn't make sense it links to an empty drive now.
It was never a symlink. I had to via terminal on my upgrade disk look at the files and then I copied /home to my user folder to keep the data I had in it. Then I was able to delete /home.
But after a reboot it appeared again.

Very confusing and stupid of apple to do this, cpanel uses home so I have been using home to emulate my live site and the accounts I run under the dedicated server, so after backups are made they can be decompressed and things work right away.

SleePyCode · Nov 4, 2007, 05:31 PM

Well after some research while I await my other macs to backup the data and upgrade to leopard, I came across some valuable information.
Exploring Leopard with DTrace

Filesystem 512-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2 233769824 77282848 155974976 34% /
devfs 209 209 0 100% /dev
fdesc 2 2 0 100% /dev
map -hosts 0 0 0 100% /net
map auto_home 0 0 0 100% /home

Seems /home is a mapped drive.. Anyone got a clue how to unmap this drive? unmap nor map exist in command line. and umount says it doesn't exist.

SleePyCode · Nov 4, 2007, 05:56 PM

Sorry for the second reply in one day, but I got around it.

I wouldn't recommend people do this unless they know what they are doing but it is quiet simple to get around this mess Apple has created.

First I went to "/etc" (which is hidden so hidden files need to be enabled).

There is a file called "auto_master", Copy this file as a backup to some location for a just incase sort of deal.
Using Text Edit I opened the file and changed it from /home to /home/user to where it points the auto_home setup (Terminal might of been a better choice though to edit this).
Saving the file to the desktop ensuring not file extension was added, I copied it to the /etc folder and authenticated to replace the file.
After a quick reboot, the folder exists and has a alias in it called user which links to the home (now called user) drive.

I then made home directory writable to my user and my web user and added some files, after a reboot they still existed, which means a reboot wont delete the home directory.

So now I am around that mess that apple has created. Onto finishing up the upgrading my computers.

FatherShawn · Nov 12, 2007, 08:43 AM

Here's a well informed discussion of this behavior and what it's about:
Serious DATA LOSS problem with /home folder

SleePyCode · Nov 12, 2007, 09:38 PM

Interesting, To bad I didn't notice it that day.

Good thing is I went with another method. I moved /home to ~/home
Then did symlink of all folders/files in ~/User/home to /home.

Incase any future upgrades break this I won't have to worry about possible data loss (I did lose it after a full install of 10.5 bu luckily had A full copy in my user folder which is why I use this method now).