I accidentally unmounted /home/ and now it wont start up.

[EazyTarQet]

I was trying to mount an external drive, and I accidentally unmounted the /home/ folder/drive, which I guess is the startup drive, and now my Steam Deck wont start up anymore. Is there any solution for this?

[OGNocturnal]

Try going into the BIOS of the deck and setting your main drive back again. The BIOS is not part of the drive so you should be able to access it. Power the Steam Deck off. Then while holding Volume down press the power button. Select the correct boot drive to boot into SteamOS.
Hopefully that fixes the problem.

[EazyTarQet]

Originally posted by ßr⊕†hεr ßεdﾚαm:

Try going into the BIOS of the deck and setting your main drive back again. The BIOS is not part of the drive so you should be able to access it. Power the Steam Deck off. Then while holding Volume down press the power button. Select the correct boot drive to boot into SteamOS.
Hopefully that fixes the problem.

There are two options, and I have tried them both with no luck.

[OGNocturnal]

Originally posted by EazyTarQet:

Originally posted by ßr⊕†hεr ßεdﾚαm:

Try going into the BIOS of the deck and setting your main drive back again. The BIOS is not part of the drive so you should be able to access it. Power the Steam Deck off. Then while holding Volume down press the power button. Select the correct boot drive to boot into SteamOS.
Hopefully that fixes the problem.

There are two options, and I have tried them both with no luck.

Hmm, i would look to making a recovery bootable USB in that case and remount the drive via the recovery tools. Ive not actually had to use recovery yet but it seems to be some kind of Konsole prompt choice.
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/1b71-edf2-eb6d-2bb3

[WarnerCK]

You've done way more than "unmounting /home." Remounting it or a simple restart would have sorted that out. You aren't going to know how to correct things unless you know what you actually did.

[OGNocturnal]

Originally posted by WarnerCK:

Remounting it or a simple restart would have sorted that out.

I do agree, something is not right if its refusing to boot normally. Its impossible to de-mount the home folder, the option is there but greyed out unless there's a way to get around that.

[EazyTarQet]

I mounted my external drive to /home/

Then I tried to unmount it, but it didn’t let me. And then I could see that I couldn’t access my normal content in /home/

So then I unmounted /home/ which didn’t seem to do anything. Then I restarted, and it’s stuck at the Steam logo, and won’t go any further.

[austinp_valve]

You might need to reinstall SteamOS or reimage the device:
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/1b71-edf2-eb6d-2bb3

[EazyTarQet]

I really hope I can just install the os again. I read someone who had a similar experience and it worked for him. Because I have spent many many hours setting up everything from emulators, to Xbox cloud gaming, PS5 streaming, tons of artwork etc. it has taking me weeks……and I don’t want to do it all over again.

I was trying to mount this drive to make a backup of everything I had done……in case something like this would happen. :-/

But of course you just can’t plug in a drive and use it. It has to be near impossible……stupid Linux….

[class101 [OLED deck]]

If it doesn't boot you did not just umount because umount does not persist after a reboot and you should have booted fine

I think you edited the file /etc/fstab wrongly, this file is dangerous to edit because it contains the persistent mounts so if you introduce an error inside, you are stuck to a Recovery

On a normal system, you would have opened a Console session and reverted the /etc/fstab to its default settings

But on Steam Deck you don't have these boot tools so when you are playing with mount you do this with caution and you don't touch /home that is the only writable area of the Steam Deck, this is a system mount to not play with, your safer playground is in /home/deck/*, but not above this

To recap you can use recovery or export the ssd to a new computer, mount it here, correct the settings you changed, reinstall it in Deck, boot

[EazyTarQet]

I haven’t opened any files. I tried to mount my external hard drive but I got an error. I found out it needed some place to mount, so I choose “edit mount point” and added /home/

After that I couldn’t access files under /home/, so I tried to unmount the drive, but it wouldn’t let me. Then I unmounted /home/ and did a restart, and it doesn’t start up anymore.

[OGNocturnal]

Originally posted by EazyTarQet:

I haven’t opened any files. I tried to mount my external hard drive but I got an error. I found out it needed some place to mount, so I choose “edit mount point” and added /home/

After that I couldn’t access files under /home/, so I tried to unmount the drive, but it wouldn’t let me. Then I unmounted /home/ and did a restart, and it doesn’t start up anymore.

Ah yeah, that'l do it. Re-install the OS is your only option.

[EazyTarQet]

Originally posted by ßr⊕†hεr ßεdﾚαm:

Originally posted by EazyTarQet:

I haven’t opened any files. I tried to mount my external hard drive but I got an error. I found out it needed some place to mount, so I choose “edit mount point” and added /home/

After that I couldn’t access files under /home/, so I tried to unmount the drive, but it wouldn’t let me. Then I unmounted /home/ and did a restart, and it doesn’t start up anymore.

Ah yeah, that'l do it. Re-install the OS is your only option.

Do you think that will work? Someone else told me that you don’t loose any games, settings, plug-ins etc???

[OGNocturnal]

Originally posted by EazyTarQet:

Originally posted by ßr⊕†hεr ßεdﾚαm:

Ah yeah, that'l do it. Re-install the OS is your only option.

Do you think that will work? Someone else told me that you don’t loose any games, settings, plug-ins etc???

As long as you choose the option iv'e put in bold, yes.

In the recovery environment, there are four different options to choose from.
Re-image Steam Deck - This performs a full factory reset - all user info, installed games, applications, or operating systems will be wiped and replaced with stock SteamOS.
Clear local user data - This reformats the home partitions on your Steam Deck, which will remove downloaded games and all personal content stored on this Deck, including system configuration.
Reinstall Steam OS - This will reinstall SteamOS on the Steam Deck, while attempting to preserve your games and personal content.
Recovery tools - This opens a prompt with the ability to make changes to the Steam Deck boot partition.

Sorry i didn't read your question clearly, Re-install is worth trying before a re-image if you have a lot of stuff. If you don't have any issues after, that's fine, it worked.
If you do have issues or not much to lose then by all means re-image. That will certainly fix it as its a complete wipe and restore.

[class101 [OLED deck]]

“edit mount point” and added /home/

This is a useer friedly term to say this is going to edit /etc/fstab , you should have received a warning about doing that

Technically your home is still here but just not mounted, the fstab is the error but your data should be safe if you choose to keep it

[retrogunner]

As I just pointed out over here /home houses your `/home/.steamos` which is the **REAL** location for /etc, /opt, /root, /var as they must be r/w unlike the /boot, /usr, and so forth.

Unless you can revert your changes (like setting /etc/fstab back) by booting to any external Live Linux USB/storage, you will need to restore like Steam Support mentioned.