Just in case anyone here is tempted to use kuser in kde-3.4, *DON'T*!

When I did (I know, but I was in a hurry) to try and add an extra group to my
user permissions, it completely corrupted my user settings, resulting with me
being locked out of my own home directory!

Luckily the directory was fine, but its taken me a while to figure out what it
had broken, and fix it all!

If anyone else has the same problem, first you need to use usermod as root to
rebuild your user settings, then you'll have to use passwd (as root again) to
get your password settings back. If you don't do the latter, the system won't
let you in, continually telling you your account has expired, even if you
reset the expiry date with usermod!

--
Pete
christy@NOattglobalSPAM.net
(make the obvious amendments to reply!)

Peter Christy wrote:

> When I did (I know, but I was in a hurry) to try and add an extra group to
> my user permissions, it completely corrupted my user settings, resulting
> with me being locked out of my own home directory!

Same here!

> then you'll have to use passwd

You can also edit the /etc/shadow file (which is what I did - works
perfectly fine).

../KonMan

--
Feel free
to jabber me.

Peter Christy wrote:
> Just in case anyone here is tempted to use kuser in kde-3.4, *DON'T*!
>
> When I did (I know, but I was in a hurry) to try and add an extra group to my
> user permissions, it completely corrupted my user settings, resulting with me
> being locked out of my own home directory!
>
> Luckily the directory was fine, but its taken me a while to figure out what it
> had broken, and fix it all!
>
> If anyone else has the same problem, first you need to use usermod as root to
> rebuild your user settings, then you'll have to use passwd (as root again) to
> get your password settings back. If you don't do the latter, the system won't
> let you in, continually telling you your account has expired, even if you
> reset the expiry date with usermod!
>

It only seems to mess up my user account on my laptop. Set the uid to 0.
I just removed/added the users and chmod'd the home directory. Not sure
about the rest though.

It probably would have done more harm, but it crashed right away. heh.
What's the deal with 3.4, seems like everything is broken. Luckily it
looks so damn nice, otherwise I'd downgrade. hehe.

> It probably would have done more harm, but it crashed right away. heh.
> What's the deal with 3.4, seems like everything is broken. Luckily it
> looks so damn nice, otherwise I'd downgrade. hehe.

My word. That's exactly what I feel about KDE general, looks nice but
things are unpredictably broken. It doesn't seem to be a stable
environment to be trusted.
JB

Miguel De Anda wrote:

> It only seems to mess up my user account on my laptop. Set the uid to 0.
> I just removed/added the users and chmod'd the home directory. Not sure
> about the rest though.

Yes, it set my user uid to 0, but also removed the login shell, and set all the
password expiry information to 0 (should be -1 for domestic use). It took me a
while to figure out what was going on and reset everything!


> It probably would have done more harm, but it crashed right away. heh.
> What's the deal with 3.4, seems like everything is broken. Luckily it
> looks so damn nice, otherwise I'd downgrade. hehe.

Yes, sounds like you were lucky!

I've found kde to be generally pretty good, but they do get some strange
hiccups occasionally. kuser in 3.3 wouldn't set passwords correctly, though
everything else seems to work, 3.3 would also refuse to release cds or dvds
for ejection even though you'd unmounted them (lsof and kill are your friends
here!) and arts can be a complete pain in the rear! 3.4 has fixed some of the
bugs (cds eject ok now!) but arts is still picky, and kuser best avoided
altogether! So far everything else seems fine.

As usual with bugs, they're only a problem when you don't know about them!

--
Pete
christy@NOattglobalSPAM.net
(make the obvious amendments to reply!)

>> It probably would have done more harm, but it crashed right away. heh.
>> What's the deal with 3.4, seems like everything is broken. Luckily it
>> looks so damn nice, otherwise I'd downgrade. hehe.
>
> My word. That's exactly what I feel about KDE general, looks nice but
> things are unpredictably broken. It doesn't seem to be a stable
> environment to be trusted.

Well, the main KDE applications I use can be trusted.
Konsole, kwin, kicker, kmail, knode, amarok, kpdf are all up all the time,
days after days.

--
damjan