how-to-replace-home.md

How to handle a space in the section title

The other day, my home partition got corrupted. Thankfully, my home and root directories are on separate partitions. Here is how to replace just the home partition with the KDE partition manager.

Decrypt drive

Boot into a live CD.

lsblk
sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sdX myvolume

Don't forget to close cryptsetup when you are done!

Extract data

Mount external drive for back up.

sudo apt install testdisk
sudo testdisk

Shred and replace

Shred the old home partition and create a new one via KDE partition manager. Set the correct format and label.

Confirm correct /etc/fstab entry via sudo cat /etc/fstab.

Reboot and enter system recovery mode through GRUB.

If default home directories and files are not created, use /etc/skel or xdg-user-dirs.

/etc/skel

This copies the default configuration files from the system-wide default user settings.

su - username
sudo cp /etc/skel/.* /home/user

xdg-user-dirs

This tool is used by Debian to automatically create default home directories.

su - username
sudo apt install xdg-user-dirs
xdg-user-dirs-update

Set ownership and permissions

sudo chown -R user:user /home/user
chmod -R 755 /home/user

Reboot, and everything should work!