Hallvard Posted November 17, 2004 Author Report Share Posted November 17, 2004 well, first, i'm glad you got the KDM stuff straightened out. i'm still unsure of what you did in the first place to cause all of that mess. and i still don't know why you had/have various 10.1 & 9.2 packages mixed with 10.0. but, if it's working........... I don't think it had anything with the installation of new programs, but rather that I messed around with other things at the time. The two that I can think of: 1) I wanted to add new "login icons" (you know, the icons that represent each user in the Mandrake login window), and upon being told exactly where this directory was I found old, outdated users' icons, so I removed them, thinking I would do some "housecleaning". I also replaced one of the users' icons with a scanned image I did myself, only that in hindsight I see that I had the size wrong -I was misinformed about that. 2) I had installed the NVIDIA driver, which worked fine. But in order to get a "dualview" setup (i.e. watching DVDs from the computer on my TV, connected to the computer) I had to edit the "XFconfig-4" file, and got some help with this from a newsgroup, even though this is basically unknown territory for me. Could it be that these two things have caused all my problems? as for your "invisible" files question......... are you talking about the "hidden view" files in /home/(user)? if so, i'm not sure if you want to copy those back. here's why........... Yes, all the files and folders starting with "." in my home directory ("/home/hallvard/). all of those files are user personal settings for various apps. if you had something corrupted in any of those that started this whole mess, you're prolly gonna be back where you started. if you just let the user log into his/her desktop, all of those folders will gradually be recreated as they use the various apps they're associated with. downside is, they're gonna have to reset all of their preferences & such for those apps. Well, I also have stuff like my email messages there, which I definitely don't want to lose! I understand that these are programs' settings for that user, but surely, say a messed up setting for "Kmail" won't affect the login procedure. Besides, I created a new "test" user from scratch, and that didn't act in any different way than my existing accounts, so my guess is that it's either a missing application regarding the whole system, or the setup file(s) for the whole system are messed up. My biggest problem (apart from the obvious login problems) is that I don't have enough knowledge to know what all these different setup files do, such as "Xfconfig", "XFconfig-4", "inittab" and so on. if you really want to copy them back, i don't know of any easy way other than right clicking them, then copying/pasting each one back into the directory. that's the GUI method. if there's a CLI method, it eludes me. and, if you do that, make sure permissions are set to that user. Huh?? I was expecting something along the lines of: cp /home/backup_15_11-04/hallvard/.* /home/hallvard/ ... or something like that. I know enough to say that "cp" is the command for copying, but I'm frustrasted about not knowing the correct syntax, which is why I also find using the command line so irritating and frustrating. I used to mess a lot around with computers years ago, but now I'm more into using them as tools to get something else done if you know what I mean. Anyway, enough whining.... I understand that there's basically no way to get around using the command line when things get messed up like now, so I'm trying to do my best, so I can eventually get that graphical user-interface back! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris z Posted November 17, 2004 Report Share Posted November 17, 2004 don't misunderstand me........ there may very well be a command line way to restore your back up files. i just don't know it, if there is. i'm a GUI whore & stay away from command unless i absolutely need it. i know enough command to get me out of trouble.........& keep me from getting into it. but if there's a viable GUI way to do something, that's the route i always take. so, if somebody knows the command to do what you want & is reading this, i'm sure they'll post it. as for you restoring files........... yes, kmail is part of that. i don't think that restoring those files will screw up your login again. but, i'm not 100% sure, so that's why i suggested proceding with caution. it's good you set up a test user to do that. if it were me, i'd restore important backups (mail, desktop, maybe eye candy stuff so you don't have to go through all that again), then do certain other apps one at a time. run them, test them, if they work fine, you know the backup wasn't corrupted, & procede that way. that's just me though. i'm from the "better safe than sorry" school of thought, rather then the "balls to the walls" school. good luck. post back with your results. Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hallvard Posted November 23, 2004 Author Report Share Posted November 23, 2004 if it were me, i'd restore important backups (mail, desktop, maybe eye candy stuff so you don't have to go through all that again), then do certain other apps one at a time. run them, test them, if they work fine, you know the backup wasn't corrupted, & procede that way. that's just me though. i'm from the "better safe than sorry" school of thought, rather then the "balls to the walls" school. Maybe I should do that. My biggest fear is of course that I find out after I've reinstalled Mandrake that I didn't back things up properly after all. I did a mistake this time around thinking I had backing up (by copying my "home" directory), then deleting the "invisible" files in my original home directory as suggested in this thread. Well, turns out that I hadn't made a backup of everything, but fortunately I had made an equally big mistake when trying to delete stuff, which I hadn't, so I was lucky and didn't lose all of my mail anyway! The second problem is that I simply don't know how I can possibly back up a huge directory such as my (and all other users') home directories -I usually back up my files to CD-RWs, but this will end up as a total mess and take forever. Would it be possible to say compress each user's home directories (so as to keep everything intact within one file), then place those backup files on the Windows hard drive (I can access the Windows ME harddrive from Linux). When I'm done reinstalling Linux I can copy those files back into Linux, then decompress them and try to put everything back into place. Phew!!!! I'd rather not go through all of that though. I think I'm going to create a new thread here about all of this as the subject is more precise now -I've narrowed down where the problem lies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris z Posted November 23, 2004 Report Share Posted November 23, 2004 (edited) you can tar your /home (or any directory, for that matter) via the following method in terminal as root....... tar cvfPpz /home/<user name>.tar bob --directory=/path/to/where/you/want/it/to/go (tar cvfPpz = creating & preserving all permission& absolute paths, using gzip compression) (bob = it will name the .tar.gz file bob. use whatever name you like there.) (--directory= is the path you want to put the zipped file. IE: --directory=/mnt/windows/backups) to reinstall them should you need to, in terminal as root do...... tar -xvzf <name of>tar.gz and it will extract back to your /home directory. Chris Edited November 23, 2004 by chris z Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.