Permissions

[payasam]

My fresh installation of Mandrake 10.1 ran for a couple of days but then suddenly began to give trouble. The last time I tried to boot, the system said sorry, it had "no write access to $home". Earlier I was unable to copy a file from a Win 98 partition to a sub-dir under /home/user/ without becoming root. There were references to "overriding mode 0755" and "I/O error 13". Acrobat reader refused to run because it could not create a sub-dir under /home/user/.

 

I have done nothing which I did not do in Mandrake 10.0. I haven't even installed all the software I had in that. Will someone please help me out of this pit of abysmal ignorance? Do bear in mind that I do not know how to change permissions or even how to log in as root.

[aru]

please display your /home/user permissions; run the following commands and paste the output here:

stat -c '%a' ${HOME}
ls -ld ${HOME}
ls -l ${HOME}

[arctic]

hi there :)

first question: have you updated your system during the last days? if not, updating might solve some problems.

 

now, first you should log in as root. so when you start your machine, select at the lilo promt to boot your system in failsafe mode. you will notice that your machine will stop at a command-line-prompt. type "init 3". thus you will not log in with a graphical environment (i guess you are still using mdkdm login manager, this is why we are doing this procedure) but into your system with only a command line. once you get to the command line, there will be a login prompt. now type "root" and enter the root password.

 

once you have managed this, type the following:

 

chown -R user1:user1 /home/user1

 

don't forget to replace the "user1" with your username. ;)

Edited December 24, 2004 by arctic

[aru]

now, first you should log in as root. so when you start your machine, select at the lilo promt to boot your system in failsafe mode. you will notice that your machine will stop at a command-line-prompt. type "init 3". thus you will not log in with a graphical environment (i guess you are still using mdkdm login manager, this is why we are doing this procedure) but into your system with only a command line. once you get to the command line, there will be a login prompt. now type "root" and enter the root password.

Whouldn't be easier to tell payasam to type "init 1" at the lilo prompt, hence he will boot directly to root w/o even need to type a password.

chown -R user1:user1 /home/user1

 

don't forget to replace the "user1" with your username. ;)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

payasam wrote "Do bear in mind that I do not know how to change permissions or even how to log in as root."

so telling him to do such recursive chown *at least* seems to me that is a bit dangerous. That's why I asked for some feedback from payasam prior to post a solution, just to see which is exactly the problem (indeed he may have set a high secure mode and chown could be useless) which will be shown with the output of the commands I've requested.

 

sorry for being so rude but I guess we need some feedback to decide which is the problem before posting a solution

 

;)

[arctic]

hmm... i guess you are right, aru. and it is not rude to tell me what you think about it. :) you know, sometimes we make a suggestion in a hurry, only because the food is burning in the oven. :P

 

but anyway... the chown command would not harm his install in any way imho, even if he did accidently have his security setting too high. but it is always good to have more than one person responding. more users thinking=more answers = less mistakes arouse. :)

[payasam]

Aru, your initial advice wouldn't have helped, since I wouldn't have been able to get to where I was to type the commands you listed.

 

Good to see you again, Arctic, though I think your appearance has changed. You've told me how to get in, so perhaps after that I can do what Aru suggests. Also the updates, of course, which I really should have done earlier. One gets lazy with age.

 

My security is set to normal or whatever Mandrake calls it.

 

[EDIT] All well after I did as you said, Arctic. Acrobat Reader ran after making the file it wanted to make, and I copied a couple of files from D: to /home/user/xxx without problems. Now I must see to the update business. How does someone with such a chilly name bring so much warmth into desperate people's lives?

Edited December 24, 2004 by payasam

[pmpatrick]

Check in mcc>Security>Levels and checks for the security level your system is set at. Anyting greater than "High" will cause real usability problems, one of which is the inability to write to your home directory unless your root.

Never mind; you already checked this.

Edited December 24, 2004 by pmpatrick

[payasam]

Thanks, Patrick. I know the level of security I chose when I installed 10.1.

 

Arctic: I've done a spot of updating. Skipped things related to what I don't use, but if there's trouble I can always go back. I wish I knew of a way to save the downloaded updates as RPMs so that if I have to re-install the OS, or install it on another machine, the updating could be done off a CD.

[adamw]

Install them with urpmi --noclean ; that way they'll stay in /var/cache/urpmi/rpms after installation. I don't think MandrakeUpdate can be passed the --noclean option, but I'd love to be wrong!

[payasam]

I wish I'd known this earlier, Adamw. I've already brought in the updates that seemed to apply to the packages I use. But I'll scribble this down and hope to find it on a future installation. One difficulty I foresee, though, is figuring out which names to give to urpmi. MandrakeUpdate did that brain-work for me. I don't think MU accepts the --noclean option, though it did ask if I wanted to "update media", whatever that meant. I couldn't see how I might have "updated" four recorded CDs.

[adamw]

If you have an updates source set up, try this:

 

urpmi.update -a

urpmi --auto-select --noclean -v

 

the first command updates your sources - i.e., checks the list of packages on them to see if it's changed from the one it has on record, and if it has, gets the new list. The second command installs all packages that have newer versions on your sources than are on your system, so on a stable release with an updates source defined, it should simply pull down all the updates you need. Note that I run Cooker so I've never actually tested this (although as it happens you use exactly the same commands to update Cooker every day), but I see absolutely no reason why it wouldn't work.

 

BTW, there's absolutely nothing to stop you simply using rsync or mirror or something to mirror the updates directory from one of the Mandrake servers. That would work equally well.

[payasam]

I don't have an updates source set up, Adamw, because I don't yet know how to set one up. I expect I'll get there in time. Advice such as yours is moving me on, since it helps me to understand commands and switches. I have a slowly growing collection of notes, which I hope will one day show me the light. Until then, the Update option in MDK is good enough. I don't know what rsync means, but the name suggests some sort of synchronisation. That's really not too bright of me, since you say clearly that it should mirror the updates directory of a server. Thanks for the tips. They'll probably come in handy one day.

[adamw]

If you run MandrakeUpdate and get updates, then that means you have an updates source set up. :)

[payasam]

Silly of me to imagine all kinds of complications when life is really so simple. But this brings up another question. Since MandrakeUpdate is installed by default, does not every user automatically have an updates source set up?

[arctic]

yupp, the source is there by default, but a user needs to check for himself for updates if he is not using 10.1. in 10.1 there is a update-checker, much like up2date in redhat/fedora included. but i do not use it. i simply run urpmi --auto-select twice a month and that's it.