Newbie: Linux Home folders, where are they located on a secondary linux disk?

[spurtniq]

Originally asked in Yahoo Answers...Still waiting there.

Primary boot disk has a straightforward directory structure:

/home/ubuntu/Desktop
/home/ubuntu/Documents
/home/ubuntu/Downloads
/home/ubuntu/Music
/home/ubuntu/Pictures
/home/ubuntu/Public
/home/ubuntu/Templates
/home/ubuntu/Videos

Now I plug in a Pen Drive w/bootable linux on it and the drive structure
looks like this:

/media/ubuntu_usb/casper
/media/ubuntu_usb/dists
/media/ubuntu_usb/install
/media/ubuntu_usb/pics
/media/ubuntu_usb/pool
/media/ubuntu_usb/preseed
/media/ubuntu_usb/syslinux
/media/ubuntu_usb/autorun.inf
/media/ubuntu_usb/casper-rw
/media/ubuntu_usb/ldlinux.sys
/media/ubuntu_usb/md5sum.txt
/media/ubuntu_usb/README.diskdefines
/media/ubuntu_usb/wubi.exe

If I COULD boot to that disk, I would see comparable directory structure as
the first example. The structure is there SOMEWHERE on the disk I can't
boot to - WHERE?

and

WHAT accounts for the difference?

HOW can I access these files?

and

Is there a way to copy them (or backup and restore them) from one Bootable
USB to the other? Having to reinstall from LiveCD everytime a USB crashes
and the subsequent reinstall of software is a royal PAIN.

Thanx

Linux Newbie

[reed9]

It should be casper/filesystem.squashfs.
SQUASHFS - A squashed read-only filesystem for Linux

The main difference I suppose is that everything on a CD or USB is highly compressed. The Ubuntu iso is ~700MB, but a full install is what, 2-3 GB?

HOW can I access these files?

You can extract the file system and make changes.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCDCustomization

Is there a way to copy them (or backup and restore them) from one Bootable
USB to the other? Having to reinstall from LiveCD everytime a USB crashes
and the subsequent reinstall of software is a royal PAIN.

That seems a little odd. I've never had to reinstall my on a flash drive because of a crash. Part of the whole point of live USB installs is that it gives you a pristine environment each boot.

But you can back it up with the dd command. (Be careful though, this is a very powerful tool that can cause a lot of damage if you screw up.)

dd if=/dev/sd(x) of=/dev/sd(y) conv=noerror,sync

Where /dev/sd(x) is the device node of your flash drive, and /dev/sd(y) is the disk or partition you want to copy the image to.
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Dd#Create_a_backup

You could use something like Clonezilla as well.
Clonezilla

[spurtniq]

Here's what I got.

Did some searching. Found:

squashfs-tools

Installed using:

sudo apt-get install squashfs-tools

Copied the filesystem.squashfs to
another drive, another folder

Created a folder 'us'

ran

unsquashfs -f -d us filesystem.squashfs

and got the following:

* /media/9030BC6F30BC5DC2/USB_Squashfile/us/bin
/media/9030BC6F30BC5DC2/USB_Squashfile/us/boot
* /media/9030BC6F30BC5DC2/USB_Squashfile/us/dev
* /media/9030BC6F30BC5DC2/USB_Squashfile/us/etc
/media/9030BC6F30BC5DC2/USB_Squashfile/us/home
* /media/9030BC6F30BC5DC2/USB_Squashfile/us/lib
/media/9030BC6F30BC5DC2/USB_Squashfile/us/media
/media/9030BC6F30BC5DC2/USB_Squashfile/us/mnt
/media/9030BC6F30BC5DC2/USB_Squashfile/us/opt
/media/9030BC6F30BC5DC2/USB_Squashfile/us/proc
/media/9030BC6F30BC5DC2/USB_Squashfile/us/root
* /media/9030BC6F30BC5DC2/USB_Squashfile/us/sbin
/media/9030BC6F30BC5DC2/USB_Squashfile/us/selinux
/media/9030BC6F30BC5DC2/USB_Squashfile/us/srv
/media/9030BC6F30BC5DC2/USB_Squashfile/us/sys
/media/9030BC6F30BC5DC2/USB_Squashfile/us/tmp
/media/9030BC6F30BC5DC2/USB_Squashfile/us/usr
* /media/9030BC6F30BC5DC2/USB_Squashfile/us/var
/media/9030BC6F30BC5DC2/USB_Squashfile/us/initrd.img
/media/9030BC6F30BC5DC2/USB_Squashfile/us/vmlinuz

the * folders had anything in them.

In the home folder I was expecting to see:

/home/administrator/Desktop
/home/administrator/Documents
/home/administrator/Downloads
/home/administrator/dwhelper
/home/administrator/Music
/home/administrator/Pictures
/home/administrator/Public
/home/administrator/Templates
/home/administrator/Videos

or even something in:

/media/9030BC6F30BC5DC2/USB_Squashfile/us/opt

where I know I've installed:

Firefox, Google Chrome and Open Office

but,

Nothing.

Most of the time, I'm able to move the USB drive between
home and work no problem.

This time, I tried using several bootable USB drives with either
Ubuntu 9.10 (Pen Drive) or Ubuntu 9.10 (LiveCD) installed on
a virus infected (Windows) laptop. None of them would load.
I got a CD to load ONCE after several tries.

The screen would blink FOREVER after which I just shut everything
down and restarted the system to Windows or tried another boot
disk.

When I got home and to work the following day, nothing
would load.

And now, I can boot to linux (dual boot laptop) ok, but, not
to any of the USB drives. I can see the files, but, I can't load
Linux.

Given these kind of problems, at least if I can backup the USB
drive, I can, perhaps, toast it and reinstall the OS from backup.

Tried Clonezilla once. It either successfully completed, and
restored, but, wouldn't boot, or it bombed on the image process.

I've got my USB setup (using GParted) as main ubuntu files (Fat32) and the
rest as storage (ext2) on 16 GB USB drives.

Maybe it's not SUPPOSED to do this, but that and a dime ain't
making a difference SEVERAL times out.

I asked on another forum how to fix this to move boot files
from either a dual boot config or from a LiveCD. The "best" I got
was to "Chroot to the USB" and copy files over.

Being new to Linux, I then asked the user to elaborate on what
exactly was meant by "chroot to the USB" and could they provide
some syntax. I further explained that it's entirely easy to trash
the whole car so to speak when all you wanted to do was change the
oil. I really didn't want to be taking (un)educated guesses and in the
process go from bad to worse by ruining my dual boot system as well.

The user responded, "I gave you an answer. Use it. Search".

Well, I didn't understand the answer in the first place. Searching either
led to more confusion or more possibilities that either didn't work or appeared
too risky to try.

Having said all this, I REALLY appreciate your answer, your thoroughness and
your explanations.

Now you have considerable background as to where this is coming from.

As I said, I've wiped and reinstalled bootable linux SEVERAL times now.

I've almost got it down to a science. But, it really is a LOT of effort to go
through every time a boot goes south.

So far, I've used Pen Drive Ubuntu 9.10, LiveCD Create USB Startup Disk (Ubuntu
9.10, Linux Mint v8, and am now playing with Lucid Lynx Beta 1 v10.04

If I leave it alone for the most part, there aren't many problems.

But, if I start updating it, as noted:

Open Office 3.2 (Pre Lucid Lynx)
Google Chrome
Ubuntu Tweaks
Bleach Bit
Geany
SBackup
Firefox 3.6 (Pre Lucid Lynx)
Wine (Wine-Doors)
unrar
flashplayer
ubuntu-restricted-extras
vlc
etc

and top it all off with

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

after having turned on all software sources

next thing I know, I've gone one boot too many,
one install too far,

and poof!

toasted.

Having said all that, any suggestions or recommendations as to
how best to get off this roller coaster?

Thanx