Help needed - unable to login (home directory does not exist)

[mazlin]

Hi,

I'm really new to linux. I just recently bought a second hand netbook (HP Mini Mi 110) from ebay which use linux ubuntu as OS.
I changed the previous username to mine but when i tried to login again...this warning pop out

"your home directory is listed as: '/home/mazlin' but it does not appear to exist. Do you want to log in with the /(root) directory as you home directory? It is unlikely anything will work unless you use a failsafe session"

so i click yes. then...

user's $HOME/.drmc file is being ignored. This prevents the default session and language from being saved. File should be owned by user and have 644 permissions. user's $HOME directory must be owned by user and not writable by other users.

next i click OK, then...

your session only lasted less than 10 seconds. if you have not logged out yourself, this could mean that there is some installation problem or that you may be out of diskspace. try logging in with one of the failsafe sessions to see if you can fix this problem.

when i click ok, the login screen reappear again...

if anyone could help me, that would be awesome. i don't even know how to use failsafe sessions. (yes, i'm that hopeless with linux).

Thanks.

Mazlin

[rcgreen]

What steps did you take to change the user name?

[mazlin]

i logon to root...then i use the command:

usermod -l new_username old_username

[zenwalker]

i logon to root...then i use the command:

usermod -l new_username old_username

should've used

 useradd 
  

, I'd say. gone.

[mazlin]

That's it?? @_@

no hope at all? can i reformat the laptop or something?

[elija]

Yes you can reformat the drive but make sure you have a CD or bootable USB key to hand. Another thing to try would be

At the log in prompt, press Ctrl + Alt + F1 which will hopefully drop you to a terminal
Log in as your new user and run the following commands

sudo -i
Gives you a root terminal but you will need to enter your password again

cd /home
Change to the home directory

ls - l (that's a lower case L)
Optionally show the files and directories, you can do this after all the other commands to view progress if you wish

mkdir mazlin
Create your home directory

chown -R mazlin: mazlin
Change ownership of the home directory to your user and group

chmod 0755 mazlin
Set permissions so user mazlin (and root) and no one else can write to that directory

shutdown -r now
Reboot your machine

Hope this helps but if I had bought a second hand machine, I would re-format and re-install in any case.

[rcgreen]

If you can still log in to root, you could rename the
user's home directory to the new name, or you could
create another user. I have run into this problem before
when creating users. Carefully read the help for the
useradd command. It is possible to create a user
without creating his home directory. The problem should
not be fatal.

[mazlin]

Thanks for the reply. I couldn't get to do the Clt-Alt-F1

So i need to reformat the computer. I've downloaded the driver from Hp website and has a bootable USB in hand.

It's going all well until it stop at

initramfs

what do i need to key in from here?

i'm too lost now