Re: invalid group name / home directory changed

[Robert Guthrie <rguthrie@pobox.com>]

On Tuesday 12 December 2000 18:48, Erik Steffl wrote:
> ktb wrote:
> > I don't know how but every file and directory has recursively changed in
> > my home directory.  What has changed is group and owner of all files.
> > they are all now "1000".
> >
> > I can change the owner to "kent" but not the group.  When I try to do
> > that I get - "invalid group name 'kent'".   I looked in /etc/group and
> > there is a line - users:x100:
> > I added kent -
> > users:x:x100:kent
> >
> > Still can't change files in /home to group "kent".
> >
> > I do not know what I could have done that all the files in my home
> > directory would change in such a way.  How could this happen?  How can I
> > add group kent?  How can I do this recursively to the whole directory?
>
>   what you did is added the kent to group users, to create a group kent
> you need something like this:
>
> kent:x:x100:kent
>
Did your home directory get created by a RedHat distribution?  They start 
numbering users at 500, whereas debian starts at 1000.  Similar with groups.  
The reason that you saw 1000 for the group is that there was no group NAME 
defined for group number 1000 (that's how the file system knows what files 
belong to what users/groups: numbers, not names).  Somehow you must have lost 
the /etc/group entry for group "kent", as Erik describes above.


-- 
Did you know that if you play a Windows 2000 cd backwards, you 
will hear the voice of Satan?

That's nothing!  If you play it forward, it'll install Windows 2000.