/home will not mount - please help

Go to your Linode dashboard. Is the disk image you attached as xvdc really an ext3 filesystem?

Try posting the result of these two commands:

cat /etc/fstab
tune2fs -l /dev/xvdc

This will (hopefully) give you output something like this:

root@summerwheat:~# cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system=""><mount point=""><type><options><dump><pass>dev             /dev            devtmpfs rw              0       0
proc            /proc           proc     defaults        0       0
/dev/xvda       /               ext3     noatime,errors=remount-ro 0       1
/dev/xvdb       none            swap     sw              0       0

root@summerwheat:~# tune2fs -l /dev/xvda
tune2fs 1.41.11 (14-Mar-2010)
Filesystem volume name:   <none>Last mounted on:          <not available="">Filesystem UUID:          c49af6ef-25cd-4529-b93f-787add367cdf
Filesystem magic number:  0xEF53
Filesystem revision #:    1 (dynamic)
Filesystem features:      has_journal ext_attr resize_inode dir_index filetype needs_recovery sparse_super large_file
Filesystem flags:         signed_directory_hash 
Default mount options:    (none)
Filesystem state:         clean
Errors behavior:          Continue
Filesystem OS type:       Linux
Inode count:              1032192
Block count:              4128768
Reserved block count:     165150
Free blocks:              2495207
Free inodes:              911610
First block:              0
Block size:               4096
Fragment size:            4096
Reserved GDT blocks:      63
Blocks per group:         32768
Fragments per group:      32768
Inodes per group:         8192
Inode blocks per group:   512
Filesystem created:       Thu Apr 29 17:43:02 2010
Last mount time:          Sun Nov 21 16:15:23 2010
Last write time:          Sun Nov 21 16:15:15 2010
Mount count:              9
Maximum mount count:      39
Last checked:             Sat Jul 24 00:57:15 2010
Check interval:           15552000 (6 months)
Next check after:         Thu Jan 20 00:57:15 2011
Reserved blocks uid:      0 (user root)
Reserved blocks gid:      0 (group root)
First inode:              11
Inode size:              256
Required extra isize:     28
Desired extra isize:      28
Journal inode:            8
First orphan inode:       8902
Default directory hash:   half_md4
Directory Hash Seed:      9986e40f-9307-4a87-ad56-ae9df39bfaf0
Journal backup:           inode blocks</not></none></pass></dump></options></type></mount></file> 

Filesystem features: filetype sparsesuper largefile

Default mount options: (none)

Filesystem state: clean

Errors behavior: Continue

Filesystem OS type: Linux

Inode count: 310272

Block count: 9920512

Reserved block count: 0

Free blocks: 8146473

Free inodes: 254889

First block: 0

Block size: 4096

Fragment size: 4096

Blocks per group: 32768

Fragments per group: 32768

Inodes per group: 1024

Inode blocks per group: 32

Filesystem created: Sat Apr 3 23:14:26 2010

Last mount time: Sat Apr 17 03:49:02 2010

Last write time: Fri Dec 3 05:59:09 2010

Mount count: 0

Maximum mount count: -1

Last checked: Fri Dec 3 05:59:09 2010

Check interval: 0 ()

Reserved blocks uid: 0 (user root)

Reserved blocks gid: 0 (group root)

First inode: 11

Inode size: 128

Default directory hash: tea

Directory Hash Seed: a47a3277-c335-40b8-a9af-2a63576b6f4c

> EXT3-fs (xvdc): error: no journal found. mounting ext3 over ext2?
> Filesystem features: filetype sparsesuper largefile

ext2 != ext3 ==> fix fstab?