The whole "root" directory you picture, and finder shows actually does not exist at all. It's kind of a "meta" directory. The unix root directory (e.g. /
) points to the folder OS X calls "Macintosh HD". Everything is a sub-directory of that, even other drives.
Basically, when you connect a external drive, insert a CD, mount a DMG
, or map a network drive, the resources contained within the new drive are actually made available (called "mounting") as a subdirectory of /Volumes/[Drive name here]
.
Finder (and finder only) has a facility that shows a fake-directory that contains all the mounted drives.
In other words, the reason you can have two home
directories is because they're not actually in the same folder. One is actually located at /Volumes/home
and the other is /home
.
Anyways...
The home
and net
directories actually exist as folders on your main drive. If you open the root directory of your drive (IN your picture, its labeled "Macintosh HD"), you'll see where they are actually located.
The home
directory seems to be related to enterprise environments, where various network drives can be defined using a directory service. I believe that, in such a situation, the automounted drives appear in /home/[Network drive name]
, rather then the OS X traditional /Volumes/[Drive name]
. In any event, it's part of the autofs
underpinnings of OS X. More here.
The /net
directory also seems to be related to the automounter. There is a thread about it on the apple support forums here.
/net is built into the automounter in OS X and uses the special map
-hosts. This built in map will consist of the exports from the named server, when that server is accessed via the /net path. For example,
if I have an NFS server at the IP address 192.168.1.10 and it exports
a directory /exports, then if I do this from my Mac:
prompt$ cd /net/192.168.1.10/exports
the Mac automounter will contact the server, mount the export, and put
me in that directory. All without me having to issue any "mount"
command.
As such, it may be possible to use the /net
directory as a shortcut to access network drives, assuming you're working from the command line. It doesn't seem to work for SMB (i.e. windows) shares (at least for me), though.
Incidentally, if you want to look at what's mounted where, all you have to do is open a command-prompt, and type mount
. It will return a list of all the drives your computer has, and where they are mounted.
What actually helped was to identify the folder inside which no file changes were detected, and then rename that folder and force a backup. Then all new content inside it got added to the old backup. After that, I renamed the folder back to its original name, added another file inside and did another backup - again, the new file got backed up.
So, somehow, that folder got stuck, and by renaming it, I could reset the backup for it.
Still, I will keep an eye out for other folders that may not get backed up, using the tmutil compare
command regularly.
You just can't trust Time Machine.
That's why I also use CrashPlan as a secondary, and offline, backup.
Best Answer
In the Go menu of Finder, there is an option titled Go to Folder… with the keyboard shortcut ⇧ shift+⌘ cmd+G. This will prompt the user to enter a folder path and it allows Unix conventions (like using
~
to refer to one's home directory; for example~/Documents
refers to the Documents folder under your home folder). You can also type part of the file or folder name and hit Tab for autocompletion of the name.Note that you can go to any folder using this option (including your own folders for documents, music, downloads, movies and so on), not just system files or folders.
Although OS X, starting with OS X Lion 10.7, started hiding important folders like
~/Library
(theLibrary
folder under one's home directory), the file/folder permissions system in OS X ensures that unless a user has an administrator account name and password, they cannot damage anything beyond what's within their own home folder (and the contents within it).Even if you disable this command, a user can still view system folders like
/System
,/Library
, etc. (although the user won't be able to modify or delete anything there without administrator access/credentials). The user can also open upTerminal.app
and navigate through directories that Finder does not show and cause damage to~/Library
.If you still wish to disable it and remove this option in Finder:
Open
Terminal.app
(from/Applications/Utilities
)Type the command:
defaults write com.apple.finder ProhibitGoToFolder -bool true && killall -HUP Finder
To enable it again, use the command (replacing
true
withfalse
from the previous command):defaults write com.apple.finder ProhibitGoToFolder -bool false && killall -HUP Finder
In conclusion, I'd suggest not to worry too much about it.
Instead, the following may help better:
Removing the option is more like Security through obscurity, and is not really a fool proof way to protect the system.