Mount Point Does Not Exist, Despite Creating It

Question

I'm trying to install Arch on a Virtualbox VM. I'm following along this guide, and this video. Not sure if relevant, but the VDI file is on an external hard drive.

I've created 3 partitions as per the video:

1. /dev/sda1 linux-swap (~5 GB)
2. /dev/sda2 ext4 (~10 GB)
3. /dev/sda3 ext4 (~35 GB)

So early on, the video suggests running a few commands:

# mkdir /mnt/home
# mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
# mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/home

But the last command gives me the following error:

mount: mount point /mnt/home does not exist

• First question: The Arch guide doesn't say I should partition my disk as the video does. Should I just forego the fancy partition scheme?
• Second question: If I should go with this partition scheme, how can I get around this error, and why is it happening in the first place?

Answer 1

This is because you created /mnt/home before mounting something to /mnt. When you did that, the "home" directory is hidden by the newly mounted /mnt filesystem.

You need to: (after unmounting everything above)

mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
mkdir /mnt/home
mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/home

Answer 2

First you create a directory /mnt/home

# mkdir /mnt/home

But then you mount /dev/sda2 to mount, which shadows over /mnt/

# mount /dev/sda2 /mnt

Then try and map to a folder that does not exist as you never made the folder on sda2 which you mapped to /mnt/

# mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/home

Is this intended?

This would work

# mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
# mkdir /mnt/home
# mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/home

because you mount sda2 to /mnt/ then create the folder on sda2 (Which is now /mnt/) then map /dev/sda3 to this folder (Which exists on /dev/sda2)

The real question is why do you want to map /dev/sda2 to /mnt/? /mnt/ is for mount points, sure you could store then on a different physical drive but it won;t really save space or anything.