No permissions to the filesystem

[Kunasha]

I'm having a chain of problems, one coming faster than the last. Finally, when things started to brighten up - this happened:
Booting into OpenSUSE 11.3 64-bit results in an error where a terminal crops up and attemps to load the kernel, however, it seemingly doesn't have permission to do anything other than load the actual kernel. It can't read the login info so none of it works, and during boot 203 warnings but 0 errors are generated, complaining about the inability to read, or write, files.
The booting is customized, because the partition table is gone.

Little bit of history lesson behind what happened here:
I always used Ubuntu and Windows. Ubuntu was my primary OS and Windows was the secondary. Now, Ubuntu did what it usually does which is to **** up hardcore and suddenly not only suggest, but on its own complete, a partial OS upgrade, removing the kernel and various other nasties.
Recovery mode and older kernels still work, but I got so unbelieveably tired of that bothersome crap I decided I'd do away with Debian and switch to RPM in the hopes that it wouldn't do that. I also wanted to try KDE, and since Kubuntu is... well, an abomination that shouldn't have existed in the first place, I decided to give OpenSUSE a go.

I try to shrink my Windows partition, but it's impossible. Some kind of important system file has been located at the very end of the partition and it resolutely refuses to move. To fix this, I get EASEUS Partition Master to shrink it. This works, but it also corrupts/deletes the Partition Table so that ONLY EASEUS Partition Manager can now read it - not even Windows' built-in partition manager works anymore. In order to solve it, I can pay $55 for another program called EASEUS Partition Table Recovery Tool.
Haha, yjeah - not gonna happen.

However I don't really notice this until I plop my OpenSUSE 11.3 DVD into the computer and start installing, and notice the complaint from YaST2 that it can't give me a decent suggestion because it can't figure out what the hell's on the drive. Manual specification still works, however, and I manage to install it, only to have YaST2 complain at the end yet again that it was unable to install GRUB. Rebooting throws me directly into a command prompt.

So I spend days figuring out how to work it with GRUB and finally figure out how to find the UUID's manually and specify a GRUB2 setup that I then manage to chainboot Windows 7 and boot into both Ubuntu and SUSE.
All of it works fine, except SUSE, which has this quite horrific permissions problem, despite SUSE being the root of the file system and Ubuntu being mounted inside a home directory of the SUSE partition (incase that has any effect) - although the two user accounts have the same names and passwords.

I'm almost assuming the only thing that can possibly save my behind now is a complete reinstall, but I'd love to avoid it. Can I? :S

[Segfault]

Not sure what's going on with your system, you installed Suse over existing Ubuntu?
However, users are not matched by username or password, the rights go with UID and GID.

[Kunasha]

Not sure what's going on with your system, you installed Suse over existing Ubuntu?
However, users are not matched by username or password, the rights go with UID and GID.

I installed SuSE alongside an existing Ubuntu.

Anyway, I happen to know a highly respected software professor at the university I study at, and he told me that my computer is toast until formatting the harddrive and that I should reinstall and get my data the **** outta there before it disappears for good.

So that's what I'm doing. :/

[gogalthorp]

Good advice. No clue what you did. But random changes to try and fix a problem when you do not understand the system is never good. Should have asked here before you went poking around.

[mikesd]

I installed SuSE alongside an existing Ubuntu.

Anyway, I happen to know a highly respected software professor at the university I study at, and he told me that my computer is toast until formatting the harddrive and that I should reinstall and get my data the **** outta there before it disappears for good.

So that's what I'm doing. :/

I would use the LiveDVD or LiveCD and salvage what you can and do yourself a favor and install OpenSuSE clean and forget about ubuntu forever. But if you're going to mount home DIR's for both distros look into setting up a file server w/ NFS or Samba. Otherwise, you can (I wouldn't) mount the home dir of the other version in the current version and then download only. In otherwords in opensuse, you can mount ubuntu's home in /mnt/ubuntuhome as read only and only grab what you need from there, but I wouldn't write back and forth.

If you use NFS or Samba, and of course this 2 computers or a Vmware set up cuz it is networking, then you can share a /home dir.

[Kunasha]

Good advice. No clue what you did. But random changes to try and fix a problem when you do not understand the system is never good. Should have asked here before you went poking around.

It wasn't random changes.

It was constant attemps to fix one problem which I knew what was and knew how to fix, but which always resulted in a new bug, typically imposed by the software I used.

For example EASEUS Partition Master making the partition table unreadable. How is that my fault again? :P

Everything's fine now!

I would use the LiveDVD or LiveCD and salvage what you can and do yourself a favor and install OpenSuSE clean and forget about ubuntu forever. But if you're going to mount home DIR's for both distros look into setting up a file server w/ NFS or Samba. Otherwise, you can (I wouldn't) mount the home dir of the other version in the current version and then download only. In otherwords in opensuse, you can mount ubuntu's home in /mnt/ubuntuhome as read only and only grab what you need from there, but I wouldn't write back and forth.

If you use NFS or Samba, and of course this 2 computers or a Vmware set up cuz it is networking, then you can share a /home dir.

Thanks for this, very useful!

Sadly I've switched back to Ubuntu. OpenSuSE has to be the slowest, most heavy and downright unusable distro I've ever used. Maybe it's because of KDE+FGLRX, but it was unusable. 1½ hours of battery vs. Ubuntu's 4 hours or Windows' 3½ hours. No 3D programs really ran. Everything was just so sloooow even when I removed compositing.
It also has a weird modification to its implementation of OpenJDK breaking half the Java programs I use. (Maple crashes when you hit the escape key, Matlab won't start. Nobody knows why)

Sorry for the lil' troll there. I replied because I found a "xxx has replied" in my inbox. I won't bother you again.

PS: The OpenSuSE was installed without partitioning and without any other OS installed whatsoever. I used YaST2/Parted to clean the Partitioning Table, which removed all partitions, then just installed.

[Segfault]

For example EASEUS Partition Master making the partition table unreadable. How is that my fault again?

Another one I've not heard of. Why people use all these weird unstable programs instead of simple and clear fdisk.

[Kunasha]

Another one I've not heard of. Why people use all these weird unstable programs instead of simple and clear fdisk.

It's a regularly used partitioning tool recommended by big PC magazines both physical and on the web. It's useful because Windows sometimes refuses to shrink it's partitions with FDISK because it put an unmoveable system file at the end of the partition but behind this unmoveable system file is 80GB of free space, as happened in my case.

After being recommended it from so many places I thought it'd be fine - but sadly it seems to lock down the partitioning table to Windows exclusively which NOBODY had noticed.

[mikesd]

It's a regularly used partitioning tool recommended by big PC magazines both physical and on the web. It's useful because Windows sometimes refuses to shrink it's partitions with FDISK because it put an unmoveable system file at the end of the partition but behind this unmoveable system file is 80GB of free space, as happened in my case.

After being recommended it from so many places I thought it'd be fine - but sadly it seems to lock down the partitioning table to Windows exclusively which NOBODY had noticed.

try SystemRescueCd

[Kunasha]

try <insert dang URL here lol>

I don't need a rescue. My system is doing fine again.

In case you meant the fact that it contains a partitioning tool, that partitioning tool is sadly Parted, so it won't change a thing.