how to move home in ubuntu

Question

I got a Ubuntu 15 VM and I am adding a second virtual disk for the home partition.

I moved the old home to home.old. and have mounted the new home on the new disk. and the mount is successful. But when I go see home, I don't see the directory for my test user. the directory for test is still under home.old.

I also tried to create a new test user, test2 but neither home nor home.old shows me the directory test2.

test2@test-virtual-machine:/$ cd /home
test2@test-virtual-machine:/home$ ls
lost+found
test2@test-virtual-machine:/home$ cd ..
test2@test-virtual-machine:/$ ls /home.old/
test
test2@test-virtual-machine:/$

What's going on here?

Thanks

EDIT: as per request

test@test-virtual-machine:/home$ cd ~
bash: cd: /home/test: No such file or directory
test@test-virtual-machine:/home$ pwd
/home
test@test-virtual-machine:/home$ ls
aquota.user  lost+found
test@test-virtual-machine:/home$

Answer 1

Try the following:

sudo cp -pR /home.old/test /home
cd
ll

Make sure the files listed (except for ..) all have your user name. For example:

drwx------  3 yourusername yourusername   4096 Jan  1  1970 .gnome/

---

It's a bit confusing, but to add a new user, don't use useradd. man useradd says:

useradd is a low level utility for adding users. On Debian, administrators should usually use adduser(8) instead.

Instead, first remove the user you created with useradd by using deluser:

sudo deluser --remove-home test2

Then, add a user with adduser:

sudo adduser test2

Follow the prompts, and you'll have a new user properly created.