I have 2 directories which both have stuff in them:

  • /home/user/folderApple

  • /mnt/drive/folderBanana

I want to mount folderBanana onto folderApple like this:

sudo mount --bind "/mnt/drive/folderBanana" "/home/user/folderApple"

But I still want to be able to access the contents of folderApple while this is activated. From what I am reading, binding the original directory to a new location should make it available, like this:

mkdir "/home/user/folderApple-original"
sudo mount --bind  "/home/user/folderApple" "/home/user/folderApple-original"

But this just binds /mnt/drive/folderBanana to /home/user/folderApple-original as well. I tried reversing the order and result is the same.

How do I tell mount to look for the underlying directory?

I am happy to use symlinks or something else if it’ll reliably get the job done, I am not wedded to this mechanism.

(The purpose of all this is that when an external drive is connected, I can have the storage conveniently available, but when it is not connected, the system will fallback to internal storage. But then I will want to move files between the fallback and external locations when both are available. So I need to see both locations at once.)

    • Zucca@sopuli.xyz
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      2 days ago

      So… are you saying the contents of /home/user/folderApple-original really changes after you bindmount something over /home/user/folderApple? This seems odd. Do you have submounts under the original directory? Try with --rbind?