Wife’s old computer bit the dust. I am trying to get her back up on a newer machine than what she had with her old .mozlla .thuderbird and /Doccuments and /Pictures transfered over to this newer system.
This is a fresh install of OpenSuSE 11.1 running KDE 3.5. I copied all the files over to the new /home/ann/ from her old /home/ann/ drive installed in a USB enclosure. I used midnight commander and used “preserve permissions”. All the files are now owned by 500 and the group is 500. In In .mozilla I am trying to change them back to the original ownership with konqueor running as root but the group keeps changing back to 500. How do you stop this from happening? I hate this it’s such a pain. I am telling it to “apply to sub directories” and it does not. The files should be user ann and group ann Why does SuSE keep me from changing them as root. What is going on? How do I fix this?
I have never experience an issue here. I always just backup the .mozilla folder or whatever…
to a usb external drive.
Allow new install to create it’s .mozilla or whatever
Now open the backup .mozilla/firefox/blahblah_profile
copy the entire contents
and paste to same in the new .mozilla/firefox/blahblah_profile
i’m not certain how/why the owner and group got changed to
“500”…but i GUESS it has something to do with them being in a USB
enclosure…and, not connected directly as a slave drive…
but, i’m not sure about that…
what i think i am sure of is that if you change those permissions
using the terminal it will be faster and more effective than trying to
use konqueor running as root…
CAVEAT: i’m not a real hacker, think carefully before you do anything
as root, no matter who advises…and, anyway: anyone can make a
typo…i THINK this might work for you:
open a terminal
type/enter
cd /home/ann/.mozilla directory
check that prompt shows the current directory is ~/.mozilla
NOTE: if you are not CERTAIN that you are INSIDE the directory named
…mozilla in ann’s home, then do NOT proceed!!
type/enter
su
type in root’s pass when asked (you will NOT see what you type)
type/enter
chown -R ann:users *
NOTE: with that one line you have changed all ownerships to all files
and directories in the /.mozilla directory to ‘ann’, and all groups to
‘users’…see man chown to learn what the -R does…ain’t cli fun
(and fast!!! how long would it take you to change them all with
konqueror???)
close the terminal or revert from root to user by typing and
entering ‘exit’ (that is, i NEVER leave a terminal lying around as
root…is like leaving a loaded gun in the kids playroom…if you
leave it you are just begging to have a problem when you forget and
run a command as root, thinking you are ‘just’ a user…
and, i’d be interested if someone xplains how they got to be 500:500?
is that a function of auto mounting by HAL, or what?
That is pretty much what I did with ./mozilla I just copied the contents of the old ./mozilla to the new folder. The same with /Documents. No /Pictures or .thunderbird folder existed so I had to copy those over completely.
She has over 3000 UNREAD emails in .thunderbird (insert facepalm.jpg here >:( )
I need to fix it so she can read, write and delete in those folders. I don’t have th money to run out a buy a computer for her so this old one will have to do for now.
To tell you the truth it would be a lot easier to use the terminal, I came to that conclusion after many messed up copy attempts.
sudo su
cp -a /whereverthefolderis/sourcefolder /destinationfolder/
chown -R ann:users /destinationfolder
You said the files/folders should be changed to ann:ann, but I’m quite sure openSUSE always uses username:users as the username:group combination instead.
Of course if you have purposely made ann also a group, then make the chown command ann:ann instead.
i think his problem stemmed from removing the hard drive from the
old computer and putting it in the USB enclosure and connecting it
that way…
i think maybe the enclosure was owned by 500, and the group of all
files in the enclosure were 500…and he preserved that by so checking
that option in midnight commander…
but that is a GUESS, as i don’t have a USB enclosure here that i can
experiment with to learn definitively…
The group 500 is some kind of openSuSE “group permssions” thing . The way I did it has always worked in Mandriva for me for YEARS. I have read the chown man and it plain as mud to me. To many letters and things to break and mess up. I use my computer as a daily driver not some toy I can reinstall 50 times a year so I am VERY careful snf only su into root when I have too. Mostly I use the GUI tools. I used Mandriva for about 4 years as my main Desktop computing environment. I switched to openSuSE in Febuary I think. A friend suggested it was time to bail on Mandriva and I still would rather use KDE 3.5
Her old /home was on a 6.5 gig drive on an Athlon 850 runni9ng Mandriva 2006. Her new /home is 239 gigs or so on an acient Athlon 1600 XP. I have been bugging her for 6 months to buy an new computer when she could afford one. Now she can’t afford one and needs her computer and emails/documents and bookmarks. She was using Mandriva 2006 for a LONG time.
Since I had to install using the no APIC option to get openSuSE 11.1 installed she will have to turn the computer off manually just like the old days.
I’ll give your suggestion a try. The only problem is how do I change that “group” on the directory it’s self?
If you can access the files but still can’t modify them, then maybe you need to change the read/write permissions as well.
sudo su
chmod -R 777 /path/to/folder/
That will make all the files world readable/writeable and executable (a folder needs to be executabe in order for the user to even enter it!).
It’s not the best permission set, but it will save you plenty of time messing about when you just want to get the job done.
I’m sure someone will pipe up complaining about how that is bad advice and will make all the files (in that folder and subfolders) available to everyone, (beats me why they can take the time to whinge but not to help in the first place :sarcastic:!).
You should now be able to read/write/delete ALL files in the folder and subfolders.
The correct file permissions (in my opinion) would be 600 (read/write for user and no access to anyone else), but then you would have to change the permissions of the main folder and all subfolders individually to 700 as well, which can take forever if you have lots of subfolders!
DO NOT DO THAT ON YOUR ROOT FOLDER OR /HOME FOLDER!!
In older Linux distros, the first user started at 500. This was changed to 1000 in recent years to make more room for system users. Also I think Mandriva, like its ancestor Redhat, adopted the policy of giving each user their own group. So 500 would have been the first group also. SUSE on the other hand puts all users in “users” by default.
When mounting a Linux filesystem, you get the original ownership and permissions. If you are copying as root to what is essentially a system with different uids, you will have to do a chown afterwards. So:
chown -R ann:users /home/ann
is exactly the right thing to do. Ignore the advice to chmod 777, that’s not necessary.
FlameBait wrote:
> I used Midnightconnander no cli or cp involved natural_pilot. it was
> told to preserve. openSuSE didn’t let it
i highly doubt that either openSUSE or mc failed you in the simple
task of copying files and preserving the ownership…
you may believe whatever you wish…but, my experience with mc on this
and other distros is it always does what it says it will do…in this
case the it says (in the help files):
“Preserve attributes determines whether to preserve the permissions,
timestamps, and (if you are root) the ownership of the original files.
If this is not set, the current value of the umask will be respected.”
so, i ask: did you use mc as root (with “preserve attributes” marked)
to copy the files from the usb enclosure to the new disk’s
/home/ann/.mozilla ??
if you did copy as root, then i’d say you should:
confirm the attributes of the files existing on the drive inside the
USB enclosure are in fact ann:users (not ann:ann, unless you have
actually added a group named ‘ann’…why would you do that?)
copy the files as root to the new disk
if you then duplicate this mc/openSUSE bug, please file it with the
mc/openSUSE developers…i am certain they will fix it…
caf4926 adjusted his/her AFDB on Sunday 21 Jun 2009 18:56 to write:
>
> FlameBait;2002520 Wrote:
>> I notice you are a guest natural_pilot.
>
> = low profile / NNTP /
>
> Does some good work here though.
>
>
Nowt wrong with good old NNTP, if you have registered an account on the
OpenSuSE forum and configure with the same bits then you do not show up as
guest.
A lot quicker to read and answer the forums IMHO. I can sit here and watch
all the fora without going from one to the other, a lot more ergonomically
sound.
None of that faffing around with browsers and logging in all the time, using
that funny thing with a light underneath that gets in the way of the coffee
cup.
But there again horses for courses.
plus I do not see all that HTML icky stuff
–
Mark
Cavet emptor
Nullus in verba
Nil illegitimi carborundum
ken yap adjusted his/her AFDB on Sunday 21 Jun 2009 23:36 to write:
> On the other hand the web interface has a New Posts feature which shows
> you the latest posts across all the fora. I seldom explicitly go into a
> forum.
>
>
I did not know that, I don`t go there at all
In My hay on these fora there was no such thing and the web interface was a
mere plaything, but try and tell that to these here youngsters today and
they just will not believe you.
The only one bugbear is the delay from stuff posted on the web and us seeing
it on NNTP and the fact that sometimes not all posts make it through, I see
a Q and then a reply saying cheers for that but no reply shows here…
Ah well no thing is perfect
Well definitely gone OT now and time for bed.
say goodnight Sooty.
–
Mark
Caveat emptor
Nullus in verba
Nil illegitimi carborundum
