Please forgive dumb question.
I am rebuilding a machine (13.2 64 bit KDE) and have a large drive /dev/sdb which I wish to use for data storage, primarily multimedia. I have mounted it as /data and created on it a directory /data/multimedia. In my home directory I have created a symlink named “multimedia” to the directory on the primary. This is listed as owned by users and I though should be accessible by me from my home directory but it isn’t. Am I on the right track and what am I doing wrong please.
Budge
Well I do like that too, with ext4 partition, I run this command:
chown -R john:users /data
Run it as root
Hi and thanks, that is clear and understood. I was confused by the fact that when I ran ls -l in my directory the symlink file is shown as owned by users. In properties however it is shown owned by root. Will do as you suggest but meanwhile I have a supplementary question please.
As I mentioned this is a new installation on an old machine and to differentiate from newer machine I was a bit enthusiastic about my login name which I made john_x3400_original. Now that is the name of my home directory, a bit much to type!!! If I change it now will that mess up all that I have already installed?
Budge
It should be fine to change your name in Yast ==> Security & Users ==> User and Group admin ==> highlight john_x3400_original and ==> Edit. Any name you like. This works because the alphanumeric form of name (e.g. john_x3400_original) is somewhat superficial. The real key to ownership and permissions lies in a numerical system for users that starts with 1001 and runs like 1001, 1002, 1003, … And you’re not altering that key piece of information. So for Linux, a name change is not a “game change”.
Hi and thanks for that. I did as you suggest, logged out and in again and all seemed OK until I used Dolphin which remembered my old username. I tried to edit this in Dolphin and now I have two homes showing in Dolphin. How do I get rid of the “extra” home?
I need to know existing valid names and homes.
I assume that now you log in to the Linux box with the name “john”, is that right?
Also, what is the return from this command:
cat /etc/passwd | grep /home; ls -l /home
Hi and thanks. Yes I now log in as alastair but have my full name as Alastair_x3400_original to remind me of which machine I am on. (I suspect there is a better way111)
Here is the result of running the above command:-
alastair@linux:~> cat /etc/passwd | grep /home; ls -l /home
alastair:x:1000:100:Alastair_x3400_original:/home/alastair:/bin/bash
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 36 alastair users 4096 Nov 11 22:37 alastair
drwxr-xr-x 19 999 users 4096 Nov 4 22:31 linux~
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 6 Nov 5 00:13 multimedia
alastair@linux:~>
The “two” homes is a feature of Dolphin apparently which refers to “places” I found I could edit the name by the Icon so, since I could not remove it, I have changed the second entry to alastair as the contents are the same. Actually I do not like the way Dolphin calls my directory Home when it is actually /home/alastair. Grateful for your advice when you have time.
Regards,
Budgie2
Yes Kind of like Windows I guess. Click on the line to the right of home and it will show the full path. Don’t know if that can be locked in