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this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Update - 2026.01.12
After trying to follow all advices I was given and failling miserably, I caved in and reinstalled the entire system, this time using a Debian Stable Live Image.
The drives were there - sda and sbd - the SSD and the HDD, respectively. sda was partioned from 1 through 5, while sbd had one single partition. As I had set during the installation. No error here.
However, when trying to look into /etc/fstab, the file listed exactly nothing. Somehow, the file was never written. I could list the devices through
ls /dev/sd*but when trying to mount any one of it, it returned the location was not listed under /etc/fstab. And I even tried to update the file, mannually, yet the non existence of the drives persisted.Yes, as I write this from the freshly installed Debian, I am morbidly curious to go read the file now. See how much has changed.
Because at this point I understood I wouldn't be going anywhere with my attemps, I opted to do a full reinstall. And it was as I was, again, manually partitoning the disk to what I wanted that I found the previous instalation had created a strange thing.
While all partions had a simple sd* indicator, the partition that should have been
/was instead named "Debian Forky" and was not configured as it shoud. It had no root flag. It was just a named partition in the disk.I may be reading too much into this but most probably this simple quirk botched the entire installation. The system could not run what simply wasn't there and it could not find an sda2 if that sda2 was named as something completely different.
Lessons to be taken
I understood I wasn't clear enough of how experienced with Debian I was. I ran Debian for several years and, although not a power-user, I gained a lot of knowledge about managing my own system tinkering in Debian, something I lost when I moved towards more up-to-date distros, more user-friendly, but less powerful learning tools. And after this, I recognized I need that "demand" from the system to learn. So, I am glad I am back to Debian.
Thank you for all the help and I can only hope I can returned it some day.
It wasn't for nothing, you got some learning out of the experience and a story to tell. Good luck with the new system, maybe hold upgrading that to testing for a while, there's plenty to break and fix even without extra quirks from non-stable distribution :)
Have fun and feel free to ask for help again, I and others will be around to share what we've learned on our journeys.
Sounds like the right choice! I'm glad you got Debian up and running,