Last Updated on 2021-11-03 by Clay
Today, a picture was send by a friend and he asked me why the capacity of the /home directory is larger than root directory / which should be its upper directory?
This is a very interesting question, so I just recorded it here.
Caused by the "sector" mounted on the folder
Logically, the /home folder is indeed under the root directory /, ensuring a unified and clear access path. But in Linux, we can mount different partitions on the folder so that we can access this path.
In other words, taking the picture above as an example, /home is indeed a directory/folder under the root directory, but it is also the mount point of a separate sector /dev/sde3.
I heard a more interesting analogy: you can think of is as a Windows C, D, E drive or even an external flash drive. Different folders may have different partitions, but they are under the root directory.
Therefore, in addition to the possibility of system crashes such as display error, it is that /home is mounted with an independent sector, which is not counted under the root directory /.