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I'm getting this error when I try to login to KDE, and I can't login to there because of it. My own user is screwed with this, but the other users on my system aren't. My disk isn't full or close to it. I have a 250GB drive on the netbook:


Here are the differences in the two users. For my user (dedanna), ls -al:

Screenshot after logging into XFCE, Thunar showed it, but this doesn't show in other file managers. Look on the left at the folders, the X over them, showing I have no access to them (again, this is dedanna, my primary user):


Now, on to my other user, galynda. Quite a difference. ls -al:


Screenshot of Thunar, showing nothing that I can't access in my other user galynda:


This is all after a reinstall of Mageia3 64-bit, which I FINALLY was able to get to fly late last night. It also was happening with my previously attempted installations of Magia3, both 32 and 64 bit, that is, when I could get them to install. This has been a nightmare, and I'm thoroughly exhausted.

I'm thinking about moving the files within each dedanna folder to galynda's folders, which are pretty much empty - I don't use this user unless I need another user to test things out (and they sure got tested this morning), chown them over, then deleting and restarting dedanna, move the files back, and chown them again, but I'm finding that even root can't do much about this. Any ideas to where I can access my files? This is a fairly emergent and serious situation.

Now, I'm going to hope this posts.

Thanks so much.

You seriously are getting in the tldnr trap but I'll give it a go.

This is pretty much the problem I had and moving it all to the new user pretty much solved it after remembering to chown -R the entire enchilada.

Make everything work on galynda and screw dedanna. Gettinig it to work must be your first priority.

After you have gotten even your email to work on galynda you might consider changing the name.
I did not bother I am happy with my new user account name.

Well, then, I'd have to create a new user anyway, and keep it new as I do for times when things have to be tested as a new user (comp issues, etc.).

Maybe I will go a different name for it though.

Maybe I'll change galynda to dedanna, and recreate galynda. lol. Then I wouldn't have to transfer the files again, back to another user's home. I guess all kinds of possibilities here.

Guess it's time to start transferring then. Let 'er rip all night. I'm gonnae be awake all night again anyway.

I hate weeks like this.

Yes I had that feeling when I transferred my home from Mandriva to Manjaro.
Once you are finished you will be happy with it.

Sleep is overrated

It really isn't in this case, but that's another story.

For anyone viewing this topic, I can say what doesn't work, and that's pretty much anything one can come up with in a search (and that's provided you have time to figure out which one of those solutions is right for you ). As viking says, you have to move all your files over to a new user, delete the old. chown'ing and chmod'ing doesn't do a thing; it has no effect. Screwing with usermod will only land you in a much worse position than you were in, in the first place.

And DON'T INSTALL KDE. It seems it does have a lot to do with it; it in itself will screw with your permissions.

Someday I'll be able to get another drive maybe, but for now this was my only option was to transfer everything to somewhere else, and not do it from the original user's side - root said it didn't have permissions there, either.

This must be the most frustrating time I've had with Linux. Never again. I sure hope Manjaro has an obvious way to save /home - because it won't happen if it doesn't. Same for Arch.

Well if you compare it to Windows this was a walk in the park.
It is kind of good that only the user who owns the data has access, from a security point of view. But it should be possible to transfer if to the same username - it mostly is too.
But this is a big operation so there is some FUBAR potential.
Here is a relevant discussion

I'd never got this before though, and can't even count all the times I didn't format /home, just did root, and it was uneventful. This borked everything from files themselves to several whole reinstallations.

There was FUBAR going on for sure. I did lose a lot of files out of it, and there are still three folders that won't chown over.

FYI, that discussion is a definite bookmarker. Thank you.

lisle2011 wrote:The home directory has less content and the data drive has all your 'important files'. You can always rebuild your root partition but with data separated from the home directory a person can pull the hard drive and stick it in another machine and carry on as if nothing happened.

I think I'm going to implement this soon as I can. Back up what's left of my data, and make a data partition on the hdd when I can do the clean install (better than to resize a partition, which can get a bit... "wonky") - use /home just to get me 'round on the comp. Make the data partition user-readable-and-writable.

Even still, other than two small proggies, KDE is going off this box and so is Gnome. XFCE finally is working fine.