System revoked mount-point privileges and created second mount-point with privileges.

Background: User account with sudo privileges.

Issue: New mount point created, with read, write, execute permissions, by system without notifying user. Read, write, execute privileges for original mount-point revoked by system. New mount-point has the same name as original mount-point except for a "1" appended to the end.

Same happened with two other connected drives at the same time: 2nd internal data hard drive and a USB flash device. Again, the new mount-point names are the same except for being appended with a "1".

So far all I've done is search the net, with no results.

I should probably mention that I remember accidentally hitting some keyboard keys prior to this discovery.

I know how to configure permissions. I'm only curious as to how or why this happened. Everything still works okay as long as I take the new mount-point into consideration. This system has functioned for several years with no issues. Hats off to the Debian crew for a terrific OS.


Hard drives:
1 TB boot SSD
6 TB data hard drive
4 TB data hard drive
500 GB USB memory device

Two data hard drives are mounted manually after boot (no entries in fstab for these two data hard drives). Also, USB memory device connected and auto mounts.


Hardware about ten years old
OS Debian 11 stable (with all current updates)
CPU Intel Core i7 5930K (Haswell-E)
RAM 16 GB DDR4 Corsair
Chipset Intel X99
Motherboard Asus X99 Deluxe
Video MSI GTX 970

Normally a '1' gets appended when a file gets duplicated, if you remove the one with a '1' you should be able to access your data with the original filename, you appear to have 'masked' the original mount point somehow.

fatmac, thank you for your reply.

Of course a '1' gets appended when a file is duplicated. I should have known that. I've seen that enough times before. Thanks for the reminder.

I can see two ways to remedy this: delete the original mount-points and rename the new mount-points per your suggestion or restore privileges to the original mount-points and delete the duplicate mount-points. Again, though, I can live with things the way they are. I’m only curious as to why the mount-points changed the way they did. Anyway, thanks for the "masked" hint. It gives me something to look into and learn more about.

Who is 'System' please?
Is it root? Or something else?

If user does not know of the new mountpoint - then user did not create the new mount point.
Therefore root created the new mountpoint.

Are you root or just user?

Isn't that the naming convention to say the the directory has been duplicated?

The new duplicated mount-point appears to have 'acquired' the privileges of the original mount-point.
But the privileges of the original mount-point has now been lost. Somehow.
So the mount-point is duplicated and the privileges have been 'passed' to the new mount-point. IMO.

But of course.
We've all been there.

Using your terminal please state the output of:

if I need to guess you removed those drives without umount-ing, therefore the old mount point was just broken. When you plugged the drive in the OS had to find another mount point.

"Who is 'System' please?
Is it root? Or something else?"

'System" is Debian 12.
The only root user is me, which I rarely use.
I always work from a limited user account.
I'm the only user on the computer.

"New mount-point has the same name as original mount-point except for a "1" appended to the end.
Isn't that the naming convention to say that the directory has been duplicated?"
Yes. And, I should have realized that. I’m still new to Linux.

"Same happened with two other connected drives at the same time: 2nd internal data hard drive and a USB flash device. Again, the new mount-point names are the same except for being appended with a "1".
The new duplicated mount-point appears to have 'acquired' the privileges of the original mount-point.
But the privileges of the original mount-point has now been lost. Somehow."
So the mount-point is duplicated and the privileges have been 'passed' to the new mount-point. IMO.
Correct.

I should probably mention again that the two internal hard drives do not have entries in fstab. I mount these manually after booting.
I should also mention that the two internal hard drives show in the file manager prior to mounting.

Did I mention that:
My DE is XFCE 4.16?
This Debian12 OS dual boots with Windows 10 on a 1TB SSD?

Today, 09/04/23, While hesitant, but after much reading, I deleted original and duplicated mount-points, rebooted, manually mounted both internal hard drives and everything seems to be back to normal, though, I seem to have lost some trust in this system.

Again, thanks to everyone for replying.

/etc/fstab

valuedclient@cscorsair:~$ cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# systemd generates mount units based on this file, see systemd.mount(5).
# Please run 'systemctl daemon-reload' after making changes here.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# / was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=59f90319-9bcf-4a9b-85e3-8df7d48fa1c4 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /boot/efi was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=9ECD-8705 /boot/efi vfat umask=0077 0 1
# /home was on /dev/sda9 during installation
UUID=9ceb47e1-d2b2-434e-ae66-72d4969e1ff8 /home ext4 defaults 0 2
# /tmp was on /dev/sda8 during installation
UUID=a1082c26-9fc7-4411-97b0-532a8f844831 /tmp ext4 defaults 0 2
# /var was on /dev/sda6 during installation
UUID=e27ef222-9dfa-4a73-ab81-cd68cc2440ad /var ext4 defaults 0 2
# swap was on /dev/sda7 during installation
UUID=5e222906-1c44-4cea-8a98-6e873a4ad2d9 none swap sw 0 0
valuedclient@cscorsair:~$ ^C

Okay, okay, I see the quote button down there in the corner.

No. These are SATA internal drives.

I can only guess that maybe you might have tried putting the system into suspend or hibernation by accident for a moment which might of temporarily removed power (or something similar) to the drives. For the two internal drives I would add a fstab entry using their UUID but add the noauto,users option so they do not automatically mount on startup. With the latter option you can then mount them at will as your regular user if desired.