Userdrake uh-oh; root now the only working login

**napalm_101** · 11-10-2004

Running Mandrake 9.0 here...

Last night I was screwing around with userdrake. I previously had two user accounts setup, one for me and for my wife. I managed to completely delete her account and change the username on my account.

Now I can't login to my account either with the old username/pw or the new username/pw. I can't login to her account either. The only account that I've been able to login to is root.

Through the root account, I can see that /home/me and /home/wife still exist, and also a /home/newusername for the new username that I created. The contents of /me and /wife are still there.

When I attempt to re-create the wife's account through Mandrake Configuration|userdrake while logged in as root, I get an error message something like this:

can't lock userlib file /etc/ptmp or /etc/gtmp exists

userdrake won't start from a command line either, and I'm not sure if edited /etc/passwd by hand will work or if I even know enough about it to not screw it up.

Any advice, O Gods of MandrakeLinux?

**jeremy1701** · 11-10-2004

Can you create an entirely new account? If so, create one, then transfer all the file from /home/olduser to /home/newuser.

If you'd rather not do that, copy all the file in /home/user to some tmp directory outside of /home/user like /tmp. Then use userdrake to completely remove the user. Make sure to delete the /home/user folder if userdrake doesn't. Re-create the user, then copy the contents of /tmp/usr to /home/user.

Hope that makes sense.
Jeremy

**napalm_101** · 11-10-2004

Wowza, thanks for the speedy response.

I had considered doing something similar to what you suggested, but I can't get userdrake to start at all. I can't remember the exact error message ATM, and the machine is at home.

**jeremy1701** · 11-10-2004

Post the error when you get it. We'll see what we can do

Jeremy

**napalm_101** · 11-12-2004

Okay, here's the dealio.

Attempting to login to my account using KDE yields the following error message:

Code:

No write access to $HOME directory &#40;/&#41;.

KDE is unable to start

Trying to login via Gnome gives me the same type of static. Logging in via IceWM works, but I can't open any apps.

Through IceWM, and can call Mandrake Control Center. However, when I try to start userdrak, I get the following error message:

Code:

Cannot lock user lib,

file /etc/ptmp or /etc/gtmp exists

Thank god for Knoppix cds lying around.

**napalm_101** · 11-14-2004

bump

**Muser** · 11-14-2004

log in as root and change ownership of your home directory back to you use the command

Code:

chown yourname&#58;yourgroup /home/me
cd /home/me
chown yourname&#58;yourgroup *.*

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