Moving and Renaming User Profiles

[otheracco]

Hello, I've recently upgraded my hard drive. I have 2 linux distros running, and they were running under two different home directories, but to simplify things, I decided to point the MEPIS install to use the new, giant, 450GB /home partition on the Debian install.

To do this I've had to rename one of the profiles, as they both had the same name. After renaming, I copied everything over with 'cp /home/olddirectory * -r -f /home/newdirectory' but am now running into ownership errors and maybe a couple other errors (sorry I don't totally understand all the errors).

I'd like to know all of the profile specific files I have to chown and make other changed to so that my profile works.

 

[geirendre]

If the user have the same UID on both systems,
I think you should be able to use:

'cp -pR /home/olddirectory /home/newdirectory

to copy the whole directory recursivly.
Notice the -p flag that preserves ownership.

If this doesnt work you might need to run a

chown -R newdirectoryowner /home/newdirectory

after copying the files.

HTH

 

[otheracco]

That's cool. I didn't know I could copy permissions over.

Thanks.
Unfortunately, I have another problem now.

After changing my $HOME variable to point to the new disk, I can't login under any user, even new ones that I create. I can still login to root, and that's how I am able to add new users to test (I think root must keep it's profile on the root drive instead of the $HOME drive).

Does anyone have any ideas on this? I've never changed to $HOME drive after installation before, but it seems like it should be able to be done.

 

[geirendre]

And what does your /etc/passwd-file look like?
Does it refere to your new $HOME ???

 

[otheracco]

It does, because $HOME is now mounted on the new partition. Below is the output from 'mount'. /dev/sda9 is correct. The old $HOME was /dev/sda11, which is no longer being mounted.

/dev/sda10 on / type ext3 (rw,noatime)
tmpfs on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
procbususb on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=620)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
/dev/sda9 on /home type ext3 (rw,noatime)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)

Here is what's contained is my 'passwd' file.

root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
daemon:x:1:1:daemon:/usr/sbin:/bin/sh
bin:x:2:2:bin:/bin:/bin/sh
sys:x:3:3:sys:/dev:/bin/sh
sync:x:4:65534:sync:/bin:/bin/sync
games:x:5:60:games:/usr/games:/bin/sh
man:x:6:12:man:/var/cache/man:/bin/sh
lp:x:7:7:lp:/var/spool/lpd:/bin/sh
mail:x:8:8:mail:/var/mail:/bin/sh
news:x:9:9:news:/var/spool/news:/bin/sh
uucp:x:10:10:uucp:/var/spool/uucp:/bin/sh
proxy:x:13:13roxy:/bin:/bin/sh

http://www-data:x:33:33:www-data:/var/www:/bin/sh

backup:x:34:34:backup:/var/backups:/bin/sh
list:x:38:38:Mailing List Manager:/var/list:/bin/sh
irc:x:39:39:ircd:/var/run/ircd:/bin/sh
gnats:x:41:41:Gnats Bug-Reporting System (admin):/var/lib/gnats:/bin/sh
nobody:x:65534:65534:nobody:/nonexistent:/bin/sh
messagebus:x:100:102::/var/run/dbus:/bin/false
avahi:x:101:105:Avahi mDNS daemon:/var/run/avahi-daemon:/bin/false
haldaemon:x:102:109:Hardware abstraction layer:/home/haldaemon:/bin/false
saned:x:104:112::/home/saned:/bin/false
hplip:x:105:7:HPLIP system user:/var/run/hplip:/bin/false
clamav:x:106:113::/var/lib/clamav:/bin/false
Debian-ipw3945d:x:103:114::/home/Debian-ipw3945d:/bin/false
tss:x:107:116::/home/tss:/bin/false
chad:x:1000:1000:Chad:/home/chad:/bin/bash
test:x:1001:1000::/home/test:/bin/bash

What's happening is I login (at the KDE login manager) with a non-root account, the screen goes black for 2 seconds, and then it goes right back to the login screen.

 

[geirendre]

At the login screen, hit Ctrl-Alt-F1
this should bring you to the text-based login screen.
Try logging in there and see what error messages you get.