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/ and /home lost then found, How do I merge two profile?

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cptnhwdy
Posts: 2
Joined: 2017-11-09 15:35

/ and /home lost then found, How do I merge two profile?

#1 Post by cptnhwdy »

-- I lost my /home profile and began creating a new profile. I have since found the old profile and am trying to get it back with a proper bootable setup-
setup- Dual boot Windows 10 and Debian (Kali 2017.2) Grub bootloader on the Windows Disk and Debian Entirely on Encrypted secondary drive.

While updating the kernel from 4.12 to 4.13 I ran into some issues when grub brought me to the rescue menu after a restart. I eventually booted to a live CD and reinstalled grub from there, pointing grub (I thought) back toward it's original setup with the two OS disk drives in place. After reboot I found that I had an entirely new setup for my Debian os. I took a look and it appeared that I had everything in place but I did not see my original program folders, settings, etc. I saw only the default folders and files. I assumed I was working out of my Debian disk (SDC) and that I must have lost my old configuration. Out of frustration or resignment I simplybegan moving forward with setting up a new profile and re-configuring my settings yesterday.

Shortly after I noticed that the encrypted drive was not the one I was working out of and that my original user files were all still in the location on the disk where they belonged. Somehow Debian had placed the system install on a partition on my Windows disk (SDA).
It does not appear that my encrypted disk has any a boot-loader on it at all. I now have Windows and Debian on my first disk (SDA) and Debian with no bootloader on my encrypted disk (SDC). I did not want to simply reinstall an mbr on disk SDC because I am not sure if it would tie itself to my old profile or make this situation worse. I considered Chrooting into SDC and updating it that way. When I attempted to chroot into it I ran into issues with file system recognition caused by encryption on my former primary drive. I did some research on this problem but did not proceed with any further changes or attempts until I had some input on if it was a practical method or if there is an easier way.
I want to obtain my old profile and setup, the programs, configurations etc. I am not sure if I need to be looking at merging the two profiles or simply reinstalling grub on the encrypted drive and deleting my Debian setup on the other drive. I am looking for advise on how best to get back to my former setup either by merging my current(new) profile into my old one or removing my current profile in place of directing the boot process back to my original profile.

I am a novice at best and would like assistance or advice on how to fix this without causing any further issues to my setup.
Prior setup as I recall it.
Disk
SDA1-primary grub legacy boot
SDA2- Windows 10 system files
SDA3- Windows 10
Disk
SDB- Reserved storage disk with 2 partitions, no os, no bootloader
Disk
SDC- Luks encryption
SDC2-MBR and system
SDC3- /home and working partitioin

Result Fdisk -l as of today
Disk /dev/sda: 1.8 TiB, 2000398934016 bytes, 3907029168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: C51CD384-11FA-40E7-B6D5-C31EBB677FB2

Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sda1 2048 1953751039 1953748992 931.6G Microsoft basic data
/dev/sda2 1953751040 2364882943 411131904 196G Microsoft basic data
/dev/sda3 2364882944 3907028991 1542146048 735.4G Linux filesystem


Disk /dev/sdc: 238.5 GiB, 256060514304 bytes, 500118192 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xa37a04fb

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdc1 * 2048 1026047 1024000 500M 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdc2 1026048 498372146 497346099 237.2G 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdc3 498372608 500113407 1740800 850M 27 Hidden NTFS WinRE
/dev/sdc4 500113408 500117503 4096 2M 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT


Disk /dev/sdb: 2.7 TiB, 3000592982016 bytes, 5860533168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 553B1F90-B47E-4FA9-9B41-8B18F5A94504

Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sdb1 2048 4095 2048 1M Linux filesystem
/dev/sdb2 4096 503807 499712 244M EFI System
/dev/sdb3 503808 5860532223 5860028416 2.7T Linux LVM


Result lsblk as of today
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 1.8T 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 931.6G 0 part
├─sda2 8:2 0 196G 0 part
└─sda3 8:3 0 735.4G 0 part /
sdb 8:16 0 2.7T 0 disk
├─sdb1 8:17 0 1M 0 part
├─sdb2 8:18 0 244M 0 part
└─sdb3 8:19 0 2.7T 0 part
sdc 8:32 0 238.5G 0 disk
├─sdc1 8:33 0 500M 0 part
├─sdc2 8:34 0 237.2G 0 part
├─sdc3 8:35 0 850M 0 part
└─sdc4 8:36 0 2M 0 part
sr0 11:0 1 1024M 0 rom

User avatar
debiman
Posts: 3063
Joined: 2013-03-12 07:18

Re: / and /home lost then found, How do I merge two profile?

#2 Post by debiman »

cptnhwdy wrote: setup- Dual boot Windows 10 and Debian (Kali 2017.2) Grub bootloader on the Windows Disk and Debian Entirely on Encrypted secondary drive.
sorry, but kali is not debian.
you are barking up the wrong tree.
you really need to take this to the kali forums.
or better even, read kali documentation.

cptnhwdy
Posts: 2
Joined: 2017-11-09 15:35

Re: / and /home lost then found, How do I merge two profile?

#3 Post by cptnhwdy »

Thank you for the response. I have spent time working with many distros of Linux over the past year and Kali is one that I have liked most. I thought this a better forum since Kali is Debian based and my concern seems to be broader and not related to Kali tools.
I appreciate your input and redirection. I will see if I can find help in the Kali forums.

User avatar
debiman
Posts: 3063
Joined: 2013-03-12 07:18

Re: / and /home lost then found, How do I merge two profile?

#4 Post by debiman »

https://docs.kali.org/introduction/should-i-use-kali-linux wrote:Is Kali Linux Right For You?

As the distribution’s developers, you might expect us to recommend that everyone should be using Kali Linux. The fact of the matter is, however, that Kali is a Linux distribution specifically geared towards professional penetration testers and security specialists, and given its unique nature, it is NOT a recommended distribution if you’re unfamiliar with Linux or are looking for a general-purpose Linux desktop distribution for development, web design, gaming, etc.

Even for experienced Linux users, Kali can pose some challenges.

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