Re: Strategic approach to recreating an existing user
Dne, 15. 10. 2009 00:17:42 je AG napisal(a):
> Due to something that got seriously borked on my wife's Lenny system,
> I
> have decided that the best way to tackle this is to create a new
> account
> for her and transfer existing files over (excluding the KDE config
> files
> which is where the borkness seems to be).
>
> The reasons for doing this are because somehow one or more of the KDE
> configuration files has resulted in a number of problems, such as
> losing
> desktop icons and removable media (e.g. an USB stick) triggering OOo
> rather than opening the actual medium, and small but really
> irritating
>
> things like that, which despite my best attempts to fix remain
> unfixed.
>
> When I create a new account to test these issues in, I cannot
> replicate
> the problems, so am keen to transfer non-configuration files over
> (with
> the exception of the applications she uses).
> The approach that I was thinking of would be to burn the files and
> directories (including her KMail and Evolution directories as well as
> the IceWeasel bookmarks) onto a CD, delete her existing /home/<user
> directory> and then add her as a new user again, and then transfer
> what
> is on the CD back into the newly created account.
>
> Can anyone see any potential gotchas to this approach, or recommend a
> more sophisticated way of accomplishing the same objective?
>
> TIA
>
> AG
>
>
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>
A potential gotcha may be, say, file permissions, but there may be
others I am not aware of. Your wife may "own" files scattered over
several filesystems, and her ownership is established by the OS via her
user number (generally a number over 1000, say, 1001 or 1002 etc), NOT
via her user name. In order to avoid such (and other) potential
gotchas, I would not take your approach. Instead, I would simply set up
a new user foo, rename her current .kde (or .kde3 or .kde4 or whatever
it's called these days) to .kde.old, and copy foo's .kde over to her
home dir using the --no-preserve=all option IIRC. That way, she will
get a fresh default KDE which you'll have to personalize from scratch
again. If you're into risky games, you could even try reinstating some
of her olden configurations by copying select subdirs from .kde.old to
the new .kde dir ... but doing that, as you certainly know, you may
well end messing up the new configuration too.
Good luck!
--
Certifiable Loonix User #481801
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