On 02/23/2017 08:40 PM, Michael Milliman wrote:
The user has been deleted after making a copy of his home directory. A user of the same name has been added back, with a different password and can be logged in. I'm restoring things a little at the time from the backup. Firefox, Icedove, Smalltalk, and GitHub are working as before. Documents directory is restored. Now I'm wondering what all that other stuff is good forOn 02/23/2017 04:16 PM, GiaThnYgeia wrote:All very good suggestions...but I usually just get fed up looking before I find the problem, and just go for broke. It seems much easier to just re-apply my preferences than to continue digging. But it is a little like using a shot-gun rather than a scalpel.Michael Milliman:On 02/23/2017 10:47 AM, Dan Norton wrote:It should be possible to do some serious research and figure out exactly which package is croaking, and why, and then edit the configuration fileWhile playing around with Xfce, startx, and fvwm I've managed to clobber something such that the user can't log in. All attempts result in a fresh login box with my inputs removed. However, it is still possible to log in as root. fvwm was installed using Synaptic and run from an Xfce terminal session. When it did not produce the expected result, I shut down and rebooted. At this point it was no longer possible to log in as user - only as root. Do I have to rename /home/<user>, delete <user>, then re-define it as a new user and restore its home directory? Or is there a better way?for that package in /home/<user>. But in my experience with similar situations, this takes much more time than it is worth. I have found that usually just deleting the configuration files in /home/<user> will work. This is probably easier than the solution that you propose, but your solution should work as well, as long as you don't copy back the configuration files when you do the restore.Encouraged by the previous brave response, I have done similar hacks in the past. 1 One thing I look at is date ordered of @home/ directory. See what was last edited and reconfigured, most probably is the culprit. With some packages renaming that directory in the home folder as something else temporary (ie home/gnubg --> home/gnubg.tmp may result into a login and when you run gnubg it will act as started for first time -- not a good example I am afraid). 1.1 It may be more than one thing gone bad. 2 Create a new user, copy config files that you don't suspect are related to the problem and then go one at a time with the rest. 3 See if the file and directory rights are still in tact in your #home, maybe you locked yourself out. Root should always have the right to set a new password for a user. 4 Are you switching between desktops, do you have an alternative (openbox .. gnome .. mate ..etc). Did you try a different desktop? It may relate to desktop settings or if you removed one you may have affected an other in case you were crossing desktop specific packages. 5 Check your autostart folders for crap you can remove.
Are the config files in one place or are they scattered?When the backup was made, only root could be logged in. The backup was made with "cp -r " which changed all owners and groups to root. The backup would have been better made with "cp -ra " I think.
Thanks, Michael and GiaThnYgeia. - Dan