Re: [Pan-users] Permissions Re: Aaarrrgghhh! Whahoppena Terminal??

[Rinaldi J. Montessi]

Beartooth wrote:
> On Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:52:47 -0600, Gerald L wrote:
>       [....]
>> I was just interested to see if the alpine_helper.pl was actually owned
>> by you.
>> 
>> You have some serious ownership/permissions issues on your system that
>> are going to be VERY difficult to diagnose via email. There is
>> absolutely no reason that kwrite should be the only editor able to open
>> that file.
>> 
>> I'd suspect the fact that you couldn't open it using gedit or anything
>> else is also caused by whatever is making it fail to run every time from
>> Pan.
>> 
>> About the only way to even begin to troubleshoot at this point will be
>> for you to sit down and start writing a book.
>> 
>> Word-for-word, command-by-command, what you do from the time you turn on
>> the machine to the time it fails to work correctly. You're not running
>> the same distro I'm familiar with so it still will probably require the
>> assistance of others.
> 
>       Oh double aaarrrgghhh -- plus rats, and then more rats! 
> 
>       Here's some background -- at length, with my apologies -- on 
> that, in case it inspires anyone.
> 
>       I've been running one family of distros almost exclusively ever 
> since I got into Linux with RedHat 6 or 7, upgrading to each new release 
> when I can, and doing fresh installs whenever an upgrade fails. 
> 
>       When I get a newer bigger faster machine, the previous one gets 
> demoted to #2, then 3, then 4, then out the door. #2 - 4 are essentially 
> backitter-uppiters -- all the same apps installed, as nearly as I can 
> manage it, and most of the same data, copying all I can, back and forth 
> over the LAN or by sneakermail. All that naturally requires a lot of some 
> kind of copying.
> 
>       When I manage to bollix one so badly that I can't get online with 
> it (about every couple years), the others are ready to spring into the 
> breach.
> 
>       But their actual use is to take some of the load off #1 by 
> running stuff like weather and GPS/topo maps, where I don't need to c&p 
> between what's running and anything else -- particularly Gmane/usenet 
> groups and email.
> 
>       I used to use tar and scp to another machine to back up what I 
> wanted to keep, whenever I did a fresh install. Then I discovered I was 
> omitting a switch from my tar command, which affected permissions. 
> 
>       So I took to burning stuff to media, using K3B or Brasero, and 
> copying it back, all by click-&-drag.
> 
>       Then  about Fedora 8 or 9, I started discovering permission 
> trouble that way -- scattered, randomly afaict, all through /home/btth, 
> and maybe also elsewhere. (I'm running Fedora 10 now.)
> 
>       Chown -R btth:btth /home/btth/* and chown -R btth:btth /home/
> btth/.* don't seem to fix it. I run Gnome and metacity, no compiz; so I 
> go from the desktop with nautilus (I guess it is -- clicking and 
> dragging, anyhow), opening Properties > Permissions, looking for padlocks 
> and getting rid of them.
> 
>       I think I understand the idea of permissions, but I can never 
> keep the notation straight -- either kind of notation, with hyphens or 
> numbers. 
> 
>       Otoh, nobody but me does anything with any of my machines; so I 
> see no great increase of risk in opening permissions way up. I hope 
> that's right. (My LAN is of course behind a router, and I run denyhosts 
> except when I want to use ssh a/o scp between two. Ssh is set never to 
> let anybody log in from outside the house.)
> 
>       So much for the general case, as background. As for present 
> specifics, I'm really bewildered to hear I have permission trouble with 
> files I have just created for the first time, as user.
> 
>       Maybe I need to go to the fedora list, a/o my LUG, and start a 
> permissions thread -- if I can figure out how. Is it possible something 
> is wrong with the way my userid is set up??

I had this problem once and found the solution to be somewhat simple.

There are a couple of ways  to troubleshoot permission problems even
though the username may be the same.  I'd recommend looking in each
system's /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow to make sure your user information
is the same on each system.

Case in point, when I created my username on my first install of
slackware it gave me UID 500, whereas RH had given me UID 1000.  Thus,
even though rinaldi owned all the files in ~/, with the wrong UID I
couldn't access any of them.

-- 
-Rinaldi-
When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only
say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.