I have found the following via #shell
booting in recovery mode from grub:

1 "grep walter /etc/passwd"
walter:x:1000:1000:Walter,,,:/home/walter:/bin/bash ..agree OK

2 "ls -ld /home/walter
drwxr--r-- 71 walter walter 4096 2009-02-25 11:13 /home/walter
..permissions?

3 "df -h" ...yes /dev/sdb5 is mounted as /home

4 "blkid" does confirm UUIDs

5 "mount /home" ...gives 'according to mtab /dev/sdb5 is already
mounted /home'

So far so good except for the permissions in 2 are different. I hope
that helps to take it further.

Furthermore, should there be an entry in / as /home, which is empty?
Is there a confusion here with /home in two places? What should I
expect to see in / with respect to 'home'?