Lost User

[Don Flinn]

On Thu, 2005-11-17 at 09:55 +0100, Thomas Widhalm wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, den 16.11.2005, 23:26 -0500 schrieb Don Flinn:
> > Hi
> > 
> > The other week I was trying to remove OpenOffice to install OpenOffice
> > 2.0 because of the repeated crashing of the Fedora version of
> > OpenOffice.  Somehow, I made my login inoperable.  When I tried to login
> > the screen went blank for some time then came back to the login screen.
> > Logging in as root I created another user.  Although I can reach the old
> > user directories through /home/oldusr it is a real pain especially with
> > my eudora mail (can't read my old mail).  I tried to recreate the
> > password for the old user by using passwd, but that didn't cure my
> > problem.  Anyone have a solution to get my old user login to work again.
> > 
> 
> Hi!
> 
> I encountered a similar problem, with /home directories mounted via NFS
> on a SuSE box. When I tried to log in without having my own home, I
> crashed back to the login screen while using X.
> 
> Does your home (and the files in it) still belong to you? And are the
> permissions set the appropriate way?
> 
> Greetings,
> Thomas
> 
> > Don
> > 
> 
> > 
> -- 
> Thomas Widhalm
> University of Salzburg, Austria
> IT- Services
> Systems Management
> Unix Systems
> pgp/gpg Key: 6265BAE6
> 

I think that is the problem.  looking at /var/messages after the failed
login attempt I see:

Nov 17 09:54:00 flinn gdm[2561]: gdm_slave_session_start: /home/donfl is
not owned by uid 502.
Nov 17 09:54:00 flinn gdm[2561]: gdm_auth_user_add: /home/donfl is not
owned by uid 502.

Looking at /etc/passwd:
donfl:x:502:503:Don Flinn:/home/donfl:/bin/bash

Should that be 502:502 ?
I'm still a newbe at linux but am trying to learn.

Don



Don Flinn
President, Flint Security LLC
Tel: 781-856-7230
Fax: 781-631-7693
e-mail: flinn at alum.mit.edu
http://flintsecurity.com