Hello to all.. new member to the forum but been using Zorin for about 2yrs and reading the forum regularly.
Previously was using Zorin 16.3 Core for most of 2yrs until it started to slow down.. so decided to upgrade and do a clean install to Zorin 17.1 Core. I had already prepared my hdd with separate partitions (boot/efi, Swap, Root & Home) before installing Zorin 16 so just formatted them keeping my Home folder intact except for removing/backing-up large files to a portable drive.
Recently I got a message saying 'Home' was running out of space. Considering the Home partition is 890Gb in size and in DISKS was showing only 4.2% of that used I was bewildered (!) However after some investigating I discovered Zorin had made another 'Home' folder in Root and unmounted my original Home partition(!)
Have no idea how this happened and am confident I did everything correctly during the 17.1 install.
I'm not new to computers having been a Zilog and 80386 (Machine Language) programmer and hardware designer back in the1980's.. and active ever since.. so I know my way around computers and always check and recheck before taking actions.
The Home partition was properly labeled and active when installing Zorin 17.1
Since the install 17.1 hasn’t run as well as 16.3 did with several problems cropping up (bugs?). Some Apps being slow to start and needing several attempts. Brave crashes each time it’s launched despite a reinstall and I get 2 lots of software update lists which are conflicting as the native one says my computer is up to date while the other list shows a mass of updates(!). Why I get another list is a mystery to me but suspect it might be coming from Ubuntu servers although I never changed the default Zorin download Respositories.
Unlike my earlier programming years I’m not as familiar with Linux so I don’t see any easy way of fixing the Home partition problem other than a re-install.
If anyone knows different I’m listening..
I did try remounting my original Home partition but it didn’t fix the problem.
Would be grateful for any insight into why I am getting two conflicting lists of software updates.. which incidently had begun to happen with Zorin 16.3 towards the end too.. because that is frustrating.. not knowing if I’m installing stuff I don’t need..!
Any insights into these problems would be welcome..
Root has a home directory and the user accounts have a home directory. Did you install your User Home directory on a separate partition in a manner it can be unmounted?
Root /Home can fill if there are a large number of journalctl logs filling it.
@ [Ponce-De-Leon]
Hi and thanks for the welcome and the answer..
Well now I understand so everything is ok in that regard.
Good to know
cheers.. and thanks again
Tony
@Aravisian.. thanks for reply..
Hmm so the Home directory in Root is correct..? ..but it has a Downloads.. Documents and all the usual USer folders inside there which were getting full.. hence the warning. I never saw anything like this in 16.3
Yes my User Home directory is a separate partition and I can mount/unmount it.
Are your personal user files in those folders? What are they full of?
What is the size of that directory?
I have never seen anything like this either so maybe our perceptions are off or this is a pretty unusual occurrence.
Yes.. all my personal files are in there..(!)
Anything I have downloaded.. documents I've saved.. pictures.. videos.. the lot ! No wonder it filled up.. but why ?! It's weird
Attached pic of Home in Root
You probably already know... But you can elevate to root, transfer your files back to their respective home directories, then use your root permissions to reassign all those files back to User Ownership instead of Root.
Yes cables connections are good as I upgraded the psu a few days ago and checked all connections before startup. This problem has obviously been here since the install and only came to light with the Home directory warning.
Btw.. I've just opened the Home partition via DISKS and surprise surprise it has all the files which should be in Root/Home (!)..
[quote] You probably already know... [unquote] .. actually no..
Well... probably but I'd call myself a linux beginner tbh.. so any help would be appreciated..
So it seems those are reversed. Hmmm... Well, you can transfer the files of each, then change the folder ownership (recursively) of each: The Root home changed to Root ownership and the Home directory to user ownership, also recursively.
Maybe I'm missing something but it looks like the mount point is /mnt... can you check that is correct? From the looks of it, I think the issue is simply that the partition is named /home but this does not signal anything to the operating system, who treats it as any other partition and uses /mnt.
The name of the partition is likely causing confusion, giving the impression that is mounted while in reality the standard /home partition was created at the expected location.
Thank you for the help today..
I will try this tomorrow and see if I can do it. I'm not great with Linux Terminal commands but will try and let you know how it turns out..
23:20 now so I will call it a day.
Thanks again and goodnight..
rgds
Tony
Just saw this as I was about to leave..
Now you lost me..
The mount point seems to be /mnt.. Is that wrong..? Should it be /home..?
When partitioning I did assign /home correctly in the same way as the other partitions.
To me despite partitioning as /home it looks like the installer then assigned it's own /home location.. but that's about as far as my thinking on this goes..
It's "wrong" in the sense that is not what you intended to do but otherwise that is what I would expect to happen: use /mnt for additional partitions.
My guess is that you saw the partition labeled /home and assumed it would be used by the system, but the system doesn't care how a partition is labeled; that is only there for us humans.
The alternative is that something indeed went badly during the installation of Zorin OS 17 and it completely ignored your setup. Which is not unheard of; there have been plenty of issues with the upgrade to Zorin OS 17 — although I don't recall issues like this in particular.
In any case, what I would suggest is first check that the contents at /mnt/826f07... are correct. This should be your previous home directory.
Then, copy everything new that you've downloaded into the current /home directory, over to the actual partition you want to use at /mnt/826f07....
Once that's done, you can use Disks to change the mount point of the partition /home to the location /home.
@Tony_T When you installed Z17.1, did you use the "Something Else" option?
I assume you did, in order to choose not to format your /home partition from Z16, but please confirm.
.. actually no..
