Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > linux.debian.user > #174924 > unrolled thread

All settings are lost at logout

Back to article view | Back to linux.debian.user

Contents

  All settings are lost at logout 70147persson@telia.com - 2016-11-20 15:50 +0100
    Re: All settings are lost at logout Kent West <westk@acu.edu> - 2016-11-21 16:00 +0100
      Re: All settings are lost at logout Kaj <70147persson@telia.com> - 2016-11-21 17:00 +0100
        Re: All settings are lost at logout Kent West <westk@acu.edu> - 2016-11-21 17:20 +0100
          Re: All settings are lost at logout Kaj <70147persson@telia.com> - 2016-11-22 00:40 +0100
            Re: All settings are lost at logout Lisi Reisz <lisi.reisz@gmail.com> - 2016-11-22 00:50 +0100
              Re: All settings are lost at logout Kaj <70147persson@telia.com> - 2016-11-22 11:10 +0100
    Re: All settings are lost at logout Greg Wooledge <wooledg@eeg.ccf.org> - 2016-11-21 18:00 +0100
      Re: All settings are lost at logout Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2016-11-21 18:30 +0100
        Re: All settings are lost at logout David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2016-11-21 18:40 +0100
          Re: All settings are lost at logout Kaj <70147persson@telia.com> - 2016-11-22 14:00 +0100
    Re: All settings are lost at logout Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2016-11-21 18:00 +0100
      Re: All settings are lost at logout Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2016-11-21 18:20 +0100

#174924 — All settings are lost at logout

After a journey in GNU/Linux for some years via Suse, Ubuntu and Linux 
Mint for Debian (LMDE) I finally decided to take the step into the 
master himself, Debian. So I downloaded the live ISO file and started 
the install process of Debian 8.6 with Mate and Marco window manager 
from a usb memory stick on my H-P laptop. The first try went quite well 
and the system came up running.

But I made some mistakes when installing some programs, so I started it 
over in a clean reinstall. All partitions except the /home partition 
were reused but formatted. Also this time the "virgin" system was 
working well, and I started the job with installing all the applications 
I wanted.

First, however, I installed the nVidia video driver, as I have never got 
Nouveau work as I want. I have an external screen connected via hdmi and 
that one has never got any image from Nouveau. Well this is another 
question, and despite quite a lot of effort to solve that, I have 
resigned and accept using nVidia which works quite well.

Next thing to do before the application install process, was to remove 
the PulseAudio, which does note work very good together with some of the 
applications I want.

So finally the turn had come to the real adaptation work. First I 
installed some music writing programs: LilyPond and Denemo, Ardour3 and 
Jack. Next came Mozilla Thunderbird. And so it went on with, the GNU 
Emacs and a few other programs, all of which I have been using for many 
years without any problems.

At this this stage all looked very fine, and I decided to restart the 
computer. The first observation was that suddenly all the devices 
defined and mounted in /etc/fstab appeared as icons on the desktop, and 
I could not remove them. Next was that all of my settings of Caja file 
manager were gone. I use to make some personal adaptation: first I 
prefer one mouse click to open a file from the icon, the list view 
instead of icon view and a few other options like these. Until now all 
of these settings has been saved and restored at every login, but now 
they are lost and has to be redone every time. The same deals with the 
wi-fi password, I have to write it in at every login.

Next observation is that I can  add no program starters to the panel. 
Well, yes, I can add one starter, but no more, they do not appear there. 
I can remove the first icon, and add another one, but still just one. 
Creating them, even more than one, on the desktop causes no problem.
If all these effects come from the same source I do not know, but I 
suspect they do. Some package might have unintentionally been removed, 
but if so I have not been able to find out which one. I have made 
reinstalls of al lot of them, e.g. mate-panel, but without any result.
Could anyone find the common factor, I would appreciate it. If nothing 
else I will of course make a new reinstall, but it takes a good deal of 
time, and I feel it ought to be unnecessary.

Regards
Kaj

[toc] | [next] | [standalone]

#174960

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 8:41 AM, <70147persson@telia.com> wrote:

>
> A[fter a reinstall of Debian] all looked very fine, and I decided to
> restart the computer. The first observation was that suddenly all the
> devices defined and mounted in /etc/fstab appeared as icons on the desktop,
> and I could not remove them. Next was that all of my settings of Caja file
> manager were gone. I use to make some personal adaptation: first I prefer
> one mouse click to open a file from the icon, the list view instead of icon
> view and a few other options like these. Until now all of these settings
> has been saved and restored at every login, but now they are lost and has
> to be redone every time. The same deals with the wi-fi password, I have to
> write it in at every login.
>
> Next observation is that I can  add no program starters to the panel.
> Well, yes, I can add one starter, but no more, they do not appear there. I
> can remove the first icon, and add another one, but still just one.
> Creating them, even more than one, on the desktop causes no problem.
> If all these effects come from the same source I do not know, but I
> suspect they do. Some package might have unintentionally been removed, but
> if so I have not been able to find out which one. I have made reinstalls of
> al lot of them, e.g. mate-panel, but without any result.
> Could anyone find the common factor, I would appreciate it. If nothing
> else I will of course make a new reinstall, but it takes a good deal of
> time, and I feel it ought to be unnecessary.
>
> Regards
> Kaj
>
>
My first guess is that when you didn't wipe your /home partition, you
preserved your old home directory, and then logged in after the reinstall
with the same name but different user ID, which means not all of that
directory belongs to you.

I'd log out, switch to a VT (Ctrl-Alt-F2), log in as root, rename your user
directory (mv /home/kaj /home/kaj.bak), delete your current user (deluser
kaj), and then recreate your user (adduser kaj), so that you have a fresh
user directory.

This is only one of two or three ideas that come immediately to mind as a
way to deal with / test my theory that your user directory doesn't have the
correct perms, but they all boil down to suspecting your user directory
perms, and fixing them.

I doubt very seriously that a reinstall is needed.

-- 
Kent




-- 
Kent West                    <")))><
Westing Peacefully - http://kentwest.blogspot.com

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#174963

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

Den 2016-11-21 15:53, skrev Kent West:
> On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 8:41 AM, <70147persson@telia.com  > <mailto:70147persson@telia.com>> wrote: > > > A[fter a reinstall of 
Debian] all looked very fine, and I decided to > restart the computer. 
The first observation was that suddenly all the > devices defined and 
mounted in /etc/fstab appeared as icons on the > desktop, and I could 
not remove them. Next was that all of my > settings of Caja file manager 
were gone. I use to make some personal > adaptation: first I prefer one 
mouse click to open a file from the > icon, the list view instead of 
icon view and a few other options like > these. Until now all of these 
settings has been saved and restored at > every login, but now they are 
lost and has to be redone every time. > The same deals with the wi-fi 
password, I have to write it in at > every login. > > Next observation 
is that I can  add no program starters to the panel. > Well, yes, I can 
add one starter, but no more, they do not appear > there. I can remove 
the first icon, and add another one, but still > just one. Creating 
them, even more than one, on the desktop causes no > problem. If all 
these effects come from the same source I do not > know, but I suspect 
they do. Some package might have unintentionally > been removed, but if 
so I have not been able to find out which one. I > have made reinstalls 
of al lot of them, e.g. mate-panel, but without > any result. Could 
anyone find the common factor, I would appreciate > it. If nothing else 
I will of course make a new reinstall, but it > takes a good deal of 
time, and I feel it ought to be unnecessary. > > Regards Kaj > > > My 
first guess is that when you didn't wipe your /home partition, you > 
preserved your old home directory, and then logged in after the > 
reinstall with the same name but different user ID, which means not > 
all of that directory belongs to you. > > I'd log out, switch to a VT 
(Ctrl-Alt-F2), log in as root, rename > your user directory (mv 
/home/kaj /home/kaj.bak), delete your current > user (deluser kaj), and 
then recreate your user (adduser kaj), so > that you have a fresh user 
directory. > > This is only one of two or three ideas that come 
immediately to mind > as a way to deal with / test my theory that your 
user directory > doesn't have the correct perms, but they all boil down 
to suspecting > your user directory perms, and fixing them. > > I doubt 
very seriously that a reinstall is needed. > > -- Kent > > > > > -- Kent 
West                    <")))>< Westing Peacefully - > 
http://kentwest.blogspot.com

Hi Kent. Thank you for your answer.

A wee of your thoughts I have had myself. Among others I have earlier 
noticed that all these hidden config files residing in the home 
directory can give very confusing results when you install a previously 
used program in a new environment. So I tested to move all these hidden 
directories, all starting with a dot, into a specially created 
directory, in order to being able to put personal settings back when the 
problem is solved.  When running the different programs, you can see how 
they create new hidden directories to put their config files in.

So this I have tested without success. Next I have created a new user 
(test) with an own, new home directory. No success on that neither.

So I think that I have tested the essential parts in your suggestion, 
even if I have not been that drastic to clean my home directory completely.

One reason for my suspicion of a mistakenly removed program is that the 
removal of PulseAudio also took away of a lot of other programs, e.g. 
Gimp. Those I have had to lay back manually afterwards. Despite a lot of 
searching however, I have not found which program or service is lacking.

/Kaj

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#174964

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 9:39 AM, Kaj <70147persson@telia.com> wrote:

>
>
> Den 2016-11-21 15:53, skrev Kent West:
> > On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 8:41 AM, <70147persson@telia.com >
> <70147persson@telia.com> <mailto:70147persson@telia.com>
> <70147persson@telia.com>> wrote: > > > A[fter a reinstall of Debian] all
> looked very fine, and I decided to > restart the computer. The first
> observation was that suddenly all the > devices defined and mounted in
> /etc/fstab appeared as icons on the > desktop, and I could not remove them.
> Next was that all of my > settings of Caja file manager were gone. I use to
> make some personal > adaptation: first I prefer one mouse click to open a
> file from the > icon, the list view instead of icon view and a few other
> options like > these. Until now all of these settings has been saved and
> restored at > every login, but now they are lost and has to be redone every
> time. > The same deals with the wi-fi password, I have to write it in at >
> every login. > > Next observation is that I can  add no program starters to
> the panel. > Well, yes, I can add one starter, but no more, they do not
> appear > there. I can remove the first icon, and add another one, but still
> > just one. Creating them, even more than one, on the desktop causes no >
> problem. If all these effects come from the same source I do not > know,
> but I suspect they do. Some package might have unintentionally > been
> removed, but if so I have not been able to find out which one. I > have
> made reinstalls of al lot of them, e.g. mate-panel, but without > any
> result. Could anyone find the common factor, I would appreciate > it. If
> nothing else I will of course make a new reinstall, but it > takes a good
> deal of time, and I feel it ought to be unnecessary. > > Regards Kaj > > >
> My first guess is that when you didn't wipe your /home partition, you >
> preserved your old home directory, and then logged in after the > reinstall
> with the same name but different user ID, which means not > all of that
> directory belongs to you. > > I'd log out, switch to a VT (Ctrl-Alt-F2),
> log in as root, rename > your user directory (mv /home/kaj /home/kaj.bak),
> delete your current > user (deluser kaj), and then recreate your user
> (adduser kaj), so > that you have a fresh user directory. > > This is only
> one of two or three ideas that come immediately to mind > as a way to deal
> with / test my theory that your user directory > doesn't have the correct
> perms, but they all boil down to suspecting > your user directory perms,
> and fixing them. > > I doubt very seriously that a reinstall is needed. > >
> -- Kent > > > > > -- Kent West                    <")))>< Westing
> Peacefully - > http://kentwest.blogspot.com
>
> Hi Kent. Thank you for your answer.
>
> A wee of your thoughts I have had myself. Among others I have earlier
> noticed that all these hidden config files residing in the home directory
> can give very confusing results when you install a previously used program
> in a new environment. So I tested to move all these hidden directories, all
> starting with a dot, into a specially created directory, in order to being
> able to put personal settings back when the problem is solved.  When
> running the different programs, you can see how they create new hidden
> directories to put their config files in.
>
> So this I have tested without success. Next I have created a new user
> (test) with an own, new home directory. No success on that neither.
>
> So I think that I have tested the essential parts in your suggestion, even
> if I have not been that drastic to clean my home directory completely.
>
> One reason for my suspicion of a mistakenly removed program is that the
> removal of PulseAudio also took away of a lot of other programs, e.g. Gimp.
> Those I have had to lay back manually afterwards. Despite a lot of
> searching however, I have not found which program or service is lacking.
>
> /Kaj
>
>
I'd next try a different desktop environment ("sudo tasksel" might do the
job easily). If that works, you'll have a good indication that it has
something to do with MATE/Marco/Caja.


-- 
Kent West                    <")))><
Westing Peacefully - http://kentwest.blogspot.com

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#174982

Den 2016-11-21 17:18, skrev Kent West:
> On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 9:39 AM, Kaj <70147persson@telia.com
> <mailto:70147persson@telia.com>> wrote:
>
>
>
>     Den 2016-11-21 15:53, skrev Kent West:
>     > On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 8:41 AM, <70147persson@telia.com > <mailto:70147persson@telia.com>
>     <mailto:70147persson@telia.com> <mailto:70147persson@telia.com>>
>     wrote: > > > A[fter a reinstall of Debian] all looked very fine, and
>     I decided to > restart the computer. The first observation was that
>     suddenly all the > devices defined and mounted in /etc/fstab
>     appeared as icons on the > desktop, and I could not remove them.
>     Next was that all of my > settings of Caja file manager were gone. I
>     use to make some personal > adaptation: first I prefer one mouse
>     click to open a file from the > icon, the list view instead of icon
>     view and a few other options like > these. Until now all of these
>     settings has been saved and restored at > every login, but now they
>     are lost and has to be redone every time. > The same deals with the
>     wi-fi password, I have to write it in at > every login. > > Next
>     observation is that I can  add no program starters to the panel. >
>     Well, yes, I can add one starter, but no more, they do not appear >
>     there. I can remove the first icon, and add another one, but still >
>     just one. Creating them, even more than one, on the desktop causes
>     no > problem. If all these effects come from the same source I do
>     not > know, but I suspect they do. Some package might have
>     unintentionally > been removed, but if so I have not been able to
>     find out which one. I > have made reinstalls of al lot of them, e.g.
>     mate-panel, but without > any result. Could anyone find the common
>     factor, I would appreciate > it. If nothing else I will of course
>     make a new reinstall, but it > takes a good deal of time, and I feel
>     it ought to be unnecessary. > > Regards Kaj > > > My first guess is
>     that when you didn't wipe your /home partition, you > preserved your
>     old home directory, and then logged in after the > reinstall with
>     the same name but different user ID, which means not > all of that
>     directory belongs to you. > > I'd log out, switch to a VT
>     (Ctrl-Alt-F2), log in as root, rename > your user directory (mv
>     /home/kaj /home/kaj.bak), delete your current > user (deluser kaj),
>     and then recreate your user (adduser kaj), so > that you have a
>     fresh user directory. > > This is only one of two or three ideas
>     that come immediately to mind > as a way to deal with / test my
>     theory that your user directory > doesn't have the correct perms,
>     but they all boil down to suspecting > your user directory perms,
>     and fixing them. > > I doubt very seriously that a reinstall is
>     needed. > > -- Kent > > > > > -- Kent West
>     <")))>< Westing Peacefully - > http://kentwest.blogspot.com
>
>     Hi Kent. Thank you for your answer.
>
>     A wee of your thoughts I have had myself. Among others I have
>     earlier noticed that all these hidden config files residing in the
>     home directory can give very confusing results when you install a
>     previously used program in a new environment. So I tested to move
>     all these hidden directories, all starting with a dot, into a
>     specially created directory, in order to being able to put personal
>     settings back when the problem is solved.  When running the
>     different programs, you can see how they create new hidden
>     directories to put their config files in.
>
>     So this I have tested without success. Next I have created a new
>     user (test) with an own, new home directory. No success on that
>     neither.
>
>     So I think that I have tested the essential parts in your
>     suggestion, even if I have not been that drastic to clean my home
>     directory completely.
>
>     One reason for my suspicion of a mistakenly removed program is that
>     the removal of PulseAudio also took away of a lot of other programs,
>     e.g. Gimp. Those I have had to lay back manually afterwards. Despite
>     a lot of searching however, I have not found which program or
>     service is lacking.
>
>     /Kaj
>
>
> I'd next try a different desktop environment ("sudo tasksel" might do
> the job easily). If that works, you'll have a good indication that it
> has something to do with MATE/Marco/Caja.
>
>
> --
> Kent West                    <")))><
> Westing Peacefully - http://kentwest.blogspot.com

Thank you Kent for the hints on how to solve my problem. Well now I have 
stepped out on unknown ground. I had never had any reason to use this 
program tasksel, and hence knew nothing about it. But well, after 
reading the man page, I gave it a try, and installed the LXDE 
environment. After reboot I found that most of, maybe every, program I 
had installed in Mate is here too. Maybe not so strange, but a welcome 
observation. So far I have not tested all these, so I do not know if 
they also behave the same as in the old environment, but I assume they 
will. At least Thunderbird is the same, as far as I can see now.

Another observation is that all the icons of devices mounted via 
/etc/fstab is not on this desktop, so that is an advancement.

However, the settings in Caja did not survive the logout and reboot. 
They have to be defined once again.

So half a step forward, but we are not at the goal yet.

But thank you so far,

Kaj

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#174983

On Monday 21 November 2016 23:34:06 Kaj wrote:
> Den 2016-11-21 17:18, skrev Kent West:
> > On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 9:39 AM, Kaj <70147persson@telia.com
> > <mailto:70147persson@telia.com>> wrote:
> >
> >     Den 2016-11-21 15:53, skrev Kent West:
> >     > On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 8:41 AM, <70147persson@telia.com >
> >     > <mailto:70147persson@telia.com>
> >
> >     <mailto:70147persson@telia.com> <mailto:70147persson@telia.com>>
> >     wrote: > > > A[fter a reinstall of Debian] all looked very fine, and
> >     I decided to > restart the computer. The first observation was that
> >     suddenly all the > devices defined and mounted in /etc/fstab
> >     appeared as icons on the > desktop, and I could not remove them.
> >     Next was that all of my > settings of Caja file manager were gone. I
> >     use to make some personal > adaptation: first I prefer one mouse
> >     click to open a file from the > icon, the list view instead of icon
> >     view and a few other options like > these. Until now all of these
> >     settings has been saved and restored at > every login, but now they
> >     are lost and has to be redone every time. > The same deals with the
> >     wi-fi password, I have to write it in at > every login. > > Next
> >     observation is that I can  add no program starters to the panel. >
> >     Well, yes, I can add one starter, but no more, they do not appear >
> >     there. I can remove the first icon, and add another one, but still >
> >     just one. Creating them, even more than one, on the desktop causes
> >     no > problem. If all these effects come from the same source I do
> >     not > know, but I suspect they do. Some package might have
> >     unintentionally > been removed, but if so I have not been able to
> >     find out which one. I > have made reinstalls of al lot of them, e.g.
> >     mate-panel, but without > any result. Could anyone find the common
> >     factor, I would appreciate > it. If nothing else I will of course
> >     make a new reinstall, but it > takes a good deal of time, and I feel
> >     it ought to be unnecessary. > > Regards Kaj > > > My first guess is
> >     that when you didn't wipe your /home partition, you > preserved your
> >     old home directory, and then logged in after the > reinstall with
> >     the same name but different user ID, which means not > all of that
> >     directory belongs to you. > > I'd log out, switch to a VT
> >     (Ctrl-Alt-F2), log in as root, rename > your user directory (mv
> >     /home/kaj /home/kaj.bak), delete your current > user (deluser kaj),
> >     and then recreate your user (adduser kaj), so > that you have a
> >     fresh user directory. > > This is only one of two or three ideas
> >     that come immediately to mind > as a way to deal with / test my
> >     theory that your user directory > doesn't have the correct perms,
> >     but they all boil down to suspecting > your user directory perms,
> >     and fixing them. > > I doubt very seriously that a reinstall is
> >     needed. > > -- Kent > > > > > -- Kent West
> >     <")))>< Westing Peacefully - > http://kentwest.blogspot.com
> >
> >     Hi Kent. Thank you for your answer.
> >
> >     A wee of your thoughts I have had myself. Among others I have
> >     earlier noticed that all these hidden config files residing in the
> >     home directory can give very confusing results when you install a
> >     previously used program in a new environment. So I tested to move
> >     all these hidden directories, all starting with a dot, into a
> >     specially created directory, in order to being able to put personal
> >     settings back when the problem is solved.  When running the
> >     different programs, you can see how they create new hidden
> >     directories to put their config files in.
> >
> >     So this I have tested without success. Next I have created a new
> >     user (test) with an own, new home directory. No success on that
> >     neither.
> >
> >     So I think that I have tested the essential parts in your
> >     suggestion, even if I have not been that drastic to clean my home
> >     directory completely.
> >
> >     One reason for my suspicion of a mistakenly removed program is that
> >     the removal of PulseAudio also took away of a lot of other programs,
> >     e.g. Gimp. Those I have had to lay back manually afterwards. Despite
> >     a lot of searching however, I have not found which program or
> >     service is lacking.
> >
> >     /Kaj
> >
> >
> > I'd next try a different desktop environment ("sudo tasksel" might do
> > the job easily). If that works, you'll have a good indication that it
> > has something to do with MATE/Marco/Caja.
> >
> >
> > --
> > Kent West                    <")))><
> > Westing Peacefully - http://kentwest.blogspot.com
>
> Thank you Kent for the hints on how to solve my problem. Well now I have
> stepped out on unknown ground. I had never had any reason to use this
> program tasksel, and hence knew nothing about it. But well, after
> reading the man page, I gave it a try, and installed the LXDE
> environment. After reboot I found that most of, maybe every, program I
> had installed in Mate is here too. Maybe not so strange, but a welcome
> observation. So far I have not tested all these, so I do not know if
> they also behave the same as in the old environment, but I assume they
> will. At least Thunderbird is the same, as far as I can see now.
>
> Another observation is that all the icons of devices mounted via
> /etc/fstab is not on this desktop, so that is an advancement.
>
> However, the settings in Caja did not survive the logout and reboot.
> They have to be defined once again.

But did they survive after you re-entered them in LXDE and rebooted?

Lisi
>
> So half a step forward, but we are not at the goal yet.
>
> But thank you so far,
>
> Kaj

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#174993

Den 2016-11-22 00:46, skrev Lisi Reisz:
> On Monday 21 November 2016 23:34:06 Kaj wrote:
>> Den 2016-11-21 17:18, skrev Kent West:
>>> On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 9:39 AM, Kaj <70147persson@telia.com
>>> <mailto:70147persson@telia.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>>     Den 2016-11-21 15:53, skrev Kent West:
>>>     > On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 8:41 AM, <70147persson@telia.com >
>>>     > <mailto:70147persson@telia.com>
>>>
>>>     <mailto:70147persson@telia.com> <mailto:70147persson@telia.com>>
>>>     wrote: > > > A[fter a reinstall of Debian] all looked very fine, and
>>>     I decided to > restart the computer. The first observation was that
>>>     suddenly all the > devices defined and mounted in /etc/fstab
>>>     appeared as icons on the > desktop, and I could not remove them.
>>>     Next was that all of my > settings of Caja file manager were gone. I
>>>     use to make some personal > adaptation: first I prefer one mouse
>>>     click to open a file from the > icon, the list view instead of icon
>>>     view and a few other options like > these. Until now all of these
>>>     settings has been saved and restored at > every login, but now they
>>>     are lost and has to be redone every time. > The same deals with the
>>>     wi-fi password, I have to write it in at > every login. > > Next
>>>     observation is that I can  add no program starters to the panel. >
>>>     Well, yes, I can add one starter, but no more, they do not appear >
>>>     there. I can remove the first icon, and add another one, but still >
>>>     just one. Creating them, even more than one, on the desktop causes
>>>     no > problem. If all these effects come from the same source I do
>>>     not > know, but I suspect they do. Some package might have
>>>     unintentionally > been removed, but if so I have not been able to
>>>     find out which one. I > have made reinstalls of al lot of them, e.g.
>>>     mate-panel, but without > any result. Could anyone find the common
>>>     factor, I would appreciate > it. If nothing else I will of course
>>>     make a new reinstall, but it > takes a good deal of time, and I feel
>>>     it ought to be unnecessary. > > Regards Kaj > > > My first guess is
>>>     that when you didn't wipe your /home partition, you > preserved your
>>>     old home directory, and then logged in after the > reinstall with
>>>     the same name but different user ID, which means not > all of that
>>>     directory belongs to you. > > I'd log out, switch to a VT
>>>     (Ctrl-Alt-F2), log in as root, rename > your user directory (mv
>>>     /home/kaj /home/kaj.bak), delete your current > user (deluser kaj),
>>>     and then recreate your user (adduser kaj), so > that you have a
>>>     fresh user directory. > > This is only one of two or three ideas
>>>     that come immediately to mind > as a way to deal with / test my
>>>     theory that your user directory > doesn't have the correct perms,
>>>     but they all boil down to suspecting > your user directory perms,
>>>     and fixing them. > > I doubt very seriously that a reinstall is
>>>     needed. > > -- Kent > > > > > -- Kent West
>>>     <")))>< Westing Peacefully - > http://kentwest.blogspot.com
>>>
>>>     Hi Kent. Thank you for your answer.
>>>
>>>     A wee of your thoughts I have had myself. Among others I have
>>>     earlier noticed that all these hidden config files residing in the
>>>     home directory can give very confusing results when you install a
>>>     previously used program in a new environment. So I tested to move
>>>     all these hidden directories, all starting with a dot, into a
>>>     specially created directory, in order to being able to put personal
>>>     settings back when the problem is solved.  When running the
>>>     different programs, you can see how they create new hidden
>>>     directories to put their config files in.
>>>
>>>     So this I have tested without success. Next I have created a new
>>>     user (test) with an own, new home directory. No success on that
>>>     neither.
>>>
>>>     So I think that I have tested the essential parts in your
>>>     suggestion, even if I have not been that drastic to clean my home
>>>     directory completely.
>>>
>>>     One reason for my suspicion of a mistakenly removed program is that
>>>     the removal of PulseAudio also took away of a lot of other programs,
>>>     e.g. Gimp. Those I have had to lay back manually afterwards. Despite
>>>     a lot of searching however, I have not found which program or
>>>     service is lacking.
>>>
>>>     /Kaj
>>>
>>>
>>> I'd next try a different desktop environment ("sudo tasksel" might do
>>> the job easily). If that works, you'll have a good indication that it
>>> has something to do with MATE/Marco/Caja.
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Kent West                    <")))><
>>> Westing Peacefully - http://kentwest.blogspot.com
>>
>> Thank you Kent for the hints on how to solve my problem. Well now I have
>> stepped out on unknown ground. I had never had any reason to use this
>> program tasksel, and hence knew nothing about it. But well, after
>> reading the man page, I gave it a try, and installed the LXDE
>> environment. After reboot I found that most of, maybe every, program I
>> had installed in Mate is here too. Maybe not so strange, but a welcome
>> observation. So far I have not tested all these, so I do not know if
>> they also behave the same as in the old environment, but I assume they
>> will. At least Thunderbird is the same, as far as I can see now.
>>
>> Another observation is that all the icons of devices mounted via
>> /etc/fstab is not on this desktop, so that is an advancement.
>>
>> However, the settings in Caja did not survive the logout and reboot.
>> They have to be defined once again.
>
> But did they survive after you re-entered them in LXDE and rebooted?
>
> Lisi

No, they didn't. I defined them in Caja (single click etc.), did a 
reboot and checked them when the system was up again, but all settings 
were back to the default state: double click, icon view etc. /Kaj
>>
>> So half a step forward, but we are not at the goal yet.
>>
>> But thank you so far,
>>
>> Kaj
>
>

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#174968

On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 11:53:35AM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> Call up a terminal, and type:
> 
> cd
> sudo chown -R yourusername:yourusername *

This will miss the dot files, and the home directory itself.

sudo chown -R "$LOGNAME:$LOGNAME" .

And of course, you are doing this interactively, NOT in a script, which
means you should notice if the cd fails.  If the cd fails, DO NOT run
the chown command.

It would also be a good idea to *check* the ownerships of everything
before doing the chown, just to make sure you're solving the correct
problem.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#174972

On Monday 21 November 2016 11:58:39 Greg Wooledge wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 11:53:35AM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > Call up a terminal, and type:
> >
> > cd
> > sudo chown -R yourusername:yourusername *
>
> This will miss the dot files, and the home directory itself.
>
> sudo chown -R "$LOGNAME:$LOGNAME" .
>
True, my bad.  OTOH, if he has somehow lost ownership of /home/him, he 
has a much larger problem, and he will need to become root and cd 
to /home, then use your command line verbatum, but I would first

echo $LOGNAME

To find out who the system really things he is.

> And of course, you are doing this interactively, NOT in a script,
> which means you should notice if the cd fails.  If the cd fails, DO
> NOT run the chown command.

Yep, he has much bigger problems in that event.

> It would also be a good idea to *check* the ownerships of everything
> before doing the chown, just to make sure you're solving the correct
> problem.

In my case thats around 35 Gb of stuff to sift thru as my email corpus 
goes back to around 2002 in some maildirs. Since I should absolutely own 
everything in my ~/usr directory, its just easier to let the system do 
it since it can't hurt anything.  I don't know of, or am not familiar 
with, any tool in our bag of tricks that could easily find the missed 
ownership(s).

Obviously the thought of doing that at the filesystems root = / would 
inflict damages similar to an rm -Rf. Common sense will be needed.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#174975

On Mon 21 Nov 2016 at 12:23:49 (-0500), Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Monday 21 November 2016 11:58:39 Greg Wooledge wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 11:53:35AM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > Call up a terminal, and type:
> > >
> > > cd
> > > sudo chown -R yourusername:yourusername *
> >
> > This will miss the dot files, and the home directory itself.
> >
> > sudo chown -R "$LOGNAME:$LOGNAME" .
> >
> True, my bad.  OTOH, if he has somehow lost ownership of /home/him, he 
> has a much larger problem, and he will need to become root and cd 
> to /home, then use your command line verbatum, but I would first
> 
> echo $LOGNAME
> 
> To find out who the system really things he is.
> 
> > And of course, you are doing this interactively, NOT in a script,
> > which means you should notice if the cd fails.  If the cd fails, DO
> > NOT run the chown command.
> 
> Yep, he has much bigger problems in that event.
> 
> > It would also be a good idea to *check* the ownerships of everything
> > before doing the chown, just to make sure you're solving the correct
> > problem.
> 
> In my case thats around 35 Gb of stuff to sift thru as my email corpus 
> goes back to around 2002 in some maildirs. Since I should absolutely own 
> everything in my ~/usr directory, its just easier to let the system do 
> it since it can't hurt anything.  I don't know of, or am not familiar 
> with, any tool in our bag of tricks that could easily find the missed 
> ownership(s).

Well, you could start from

# find / -mount -not -group 0 -exec ls -ld {} \; -o -not -user 0 -exec ls -ld {} \;

which is for listing all non-root.root files on a root filesystem.
Substitute an appropriate pathname for / and user number for 0.

> Obviously the thought of doing that at the filesystems root = / would 
> inflict damages similar to an rm -Rf. Common sense will be needed.

Cheers,
David.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#174997

Den 2016-11-21 18:36, skrev David Wright:
> On Mon 21 Nov 2016 at 12:23:49 (-0500), Gene Heskett wrote:
>> On Monday 21 November 2016 11:58:39 Greg Wooledge wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 11:53:35AM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
>>>> Call up a terminal, and type:
>>>>
>>>> cd
>>>> sudo chown -R yourusername:yourusername *
>>>
>>> This will miss the dot files, and the home directory itself.
>>>
>>> sudo chown -R "$LOGNAME:$LOGNAME" .
>>>
>> True, my bad.  OTOH, if he has somehow lost ownership of /home/him, he
>> has a much larger problem, and he will need to become root and cd
>> to /home, then use your command line verbatum, but I would first
>>
>> echo $LOGNAME
>>
>> To find out who the system really things he is.
>>
>>> And of course, you are doing this interactively, NOT in a script,
>>> which means you should notice if the cd fails.  If the cd fails, DO
>>> NOT run the chown command.
>>
>> Yep, he has much bigger problems in that event.
>>
>>> It would also be a good idea to *check* the ownerships of everything
>>> before doing the chown, just to make sure you're solving the correct
>>> problem.
>>
>> In my case thats around 35 Gb of stuff to sift thru as my email corpus
>> goes back to around 2002 in some maildirs. Since I should absolutely own
>> everything in my ~/usr directory, its just easier to let the system do
>> it since it can't hurt anything.  I don't know of, or am not familiar
>> with, any tool in our bag of tricks that could easily find the missed
>> ownership(s).
>
> Well, you could start from
>
> # find / -mount -not -group 0 -exec ls -ld {} \; -o -not -user 0 -exec ls -ld {} \;
>
> which is for listing all non-root.root files on a root filesystem.
> Substitute an appropriate pathname for / and user number for 0.
>
>> Obviously the thought of doing that at the filesystems root = / would
>> inflict damages similar to an rm -Rf. Common sense will be needed.
>
> Cheers,
> David.
>
>


Hi Gene, Greg, David and Brian,

Thank you for answer and suggestions. They are all founded in a 
suspicion that I have lost the ownership of, or at least the access to 
my files, especially the config files in my home directory. I had really 
no feeling that this is the case, as, despite the bad behaviour I 
described initially, the environment is working, and I can use the 
programs I have installed. Also the printer is working.

But I made a test via this command sequence:

sudo find /home/<myUserId> -regex ".*/\.?*.*" -ls | awk '$5$6 !~ 
/<myUserId>/'

which filtered out all those files where my user id neither own a file 
or directory nor my group has access. The total number of files and 
directories (the part before the pipe bar) is 281502 and to 26 of them I 
or my group have no admittance. They have the root as owner and group. 
None of these 26 is a configuration file. Most of the files owned by 
root but with access from my group are those on a few vfat (fat32) 
partitions, which I have to make it possible to reach the data also from 
MS Windows. Even if this is very rare nowadays, I want to keep the 
possibility.

Because of this investigation I do not think that the reason to my issue 
is bad access to configuration files. Hope someone has more ideas.

By the way 1, echo $LOGNAME printed my login id.
By the way 2, regarding Brian's comment: I gave no root password at the 
install, so I cannot login as (or su to) root, and neither I want that.

Best regards
Kaj

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#174969

On Sunday 20 November 2016 09:41:10 70147persson@telia.com wrote:

> After a journey in GNU/Linux for some years via Suse, Ubuntu and Linux
> Mint for Debian (LMDE) I finally decided to take the step into the
> master himself, Debian. So I downloaded the live ISO file and started
> the install process of Debian 8.6 with Mate and Marco window manager
> from a usb memory stick on my H-P laptop. The first try went quite
> well and the system came up running.
>
> But I made some mistakes when installing some programs, so I started
> it over in a clean reinstall. All partitions except the /home
> partition were reused but formatted. Also this time the "virgin"
> system was working well, and I started the job with installing all the
> applications I wanted.
>
> First, however, I installed the nVidia video driver, as I have never
> got Nouveau work as I want. I have an external screen connected via
> hdmi and that one has never got any image from Nouveau. Well this is
> another question, and despite quite a lot of effort to solve that, I
> have resigned and accept using nVidia which works quite well.
>
> Next thing to do before the application install process, was to remove
> the PulseAudio, which does note work very good together with some of
> the applications I want.
>
> So finally the turn had come to the real adaptation work. First I
> installed some music writing programs: LilyPond and Denemo, Ardour3
> and Jack. Next came Mozilla Thunderbird. And so it went on with, the
> GNU Emacs and a few other programs, all of which I have been using for
> many years without any problems.
>
> At this this stage all looked very fine, and I decided to restart the
> computer. The first observation was that suddenly all the devices
> defined and mounted in /etc/fstab appeared as icons on the desktop,
> and I could not remove them. Next was that all of my settings of Caja
> file manager were gone. I use to make some personal adaptation: first
> I prefer one mouse click to open a file from the icon, the list view
> instead of icon view and a few other options like these. Until now all
> of these settings has been saved and restored at every login, but now
> they are lost and has to be redone every time. The same deals with the
> wi-fi password, I have to write it in at every login.
>
> Next observation is that I can  add no program starters to the panel.
> Well, yes, I can add one starter, but no more, they do not appear
> there. I can remove the first icon, and add another one, but still
> just one. Creating them, even more than one, on the desktop causes no
> problem. If all these effects come from the same source I do not know,
> but I suspect they do. Some package might have unintentionally been
> removed, but if so I have not been able to find out which one. I have
> made reinstalls of al lot of them, e.g. mate-panel, but without any
> result. Could anyone find the common factor, I would appreciate it. If
> nothing else I will of course make a new reinstall, but it takes a
> good deal of time, and I feel it ought to be unnecessary.
>
> Regards
> Kaj

My first reaction when I run into a weird situation like this, is to 
assume that something in the path that you should own, has somehow 
become owned by root, which blocks your access.  Since "you" should own 
EVERYTHING in your /home/you directory, the first thing I would to is to 
do an empty "cd" to put you for sure at the top of your home directory.

Call up a terminal, and type:

cd
sudo chown -R yourusername:yourusername *

sudo of course will ask you for your password, and you must be in 
the /etc/sudoers file in order to do that.  If you are the first user 
added during the install, then you're already in this priviledged state.

That won't bring back whats missing but it will make it so that stored 
prefs can be stored and recovered the next time you login.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#174970

On Mon 21 Nov 2016 at 11:53:35 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:

> sudo of course will ask you for your password, and you must be in 
> the /etc/sudoers file in order to do that.  If you are the first user 
> added during the install, then you're already in this priviledged state.

Only if there is no root password set during the install.

-- 
Brian.

[toc] | [prev] | [standalone]

Back to top | Article view | linux.debian.user

csiph-web