i am beginner in fedora linux i need help

Redlar · 06-18-2011, 09:35 AM

I have this error message:

Nautilus could not create the required folder:"/home/Desktop,/home/.Nautilus".
before running Nautilus please create the following folder or set permissions such that nautilus can create.

what is the problem ? an d how can i fix it please

Thank you

pcardout · 06-18-2011, 10:48 AM

Greetings Redlar! Welcome to Linux. I usually recommend to newbie's that they have an experienced user sit with them at their first install.
We all love Linux, but if your install goes bad and you are brand new, it sets you up for a lot of frustration. You are missing a lot of background
information from your post that will let us help you, but I am going to take a stab at it.

I'll answer the question you asked first, but I don't have time for a full answer, and I think your problems run deeper.

Every file and directory in linux has permissions. Certain users are allowed to read/write/execute every single file and folder.
A special user (root) can do anything. Ordinary users have control over their own files/directories but not those of other
users. It makes linux very secure. The "root" user is special and used to be a system administrator. Now that people use
linux at home, they are their own admin and know the root password, but after using root to modify your system, you should
remain a less privileged user for your everyday tasks. Somehow, Nautilus does not have write permissions on a directory it needs.
You can fix that using the chmod and/or chown commands ... but a newbie should not be doing this. Read on ... I think you are
really messed up.

Please understand that my guess is you probably should start over with
your installation from scratch.

First of all home directories.

Linux was designed to be a multiuser operating system (not like Windows ... but REALLY multiuser). Each users
settings are stored in the users "home" directory. Thus if you (Redlar) and your child (redlarino) are the two users
there should exist two directories.

Code:

/home/Redlar
/home/redlarino

All your configuration files (like .Nautilus) should reside in your home directory, thus your error message should have read

Quote:

Nautilus could not create the required folder:"/home/Redlar/.Nautilus"

The message you quote suggests, that when you were told to create a user you decided to call your user
Desktop,/home

This is a really weird name for a user, and if you really put a comma and a slash in the user name, it may have confused Linux. If this is what you did, you
were probably trying to name your computer, not your user. Also, despite what they do in the Windows and Mac world, don't go putting punctuation and spaces into
file names (at least not till your computer works right.)

Anyway, maybe Fedora does something weird. I used Red Hat back in 2002-2004, and it did not do anything so strange back then. My guess is you are set up
completely wrong and that many many things do not work. I recommend starting over. Wipe out the disk and start fresh. Make a user called redlar.
Sit with a buddy and get it running right.

If I am wrong and your system mostly works, then please tell us the following:

1) Can you get to a GUI or are you stuck at the command line?
2) From a command line, type pwd and post the result.
3) From a command line, type ls -l /home and post the result.

Get ready for a long slog ... but you'll learn a lot on the way. Don't run screaming, but I do hope you have resources to help you in person besides
just the online community. We excel at specific problems once a certain level of knowledge is reached, but again, it's tough for a newbie if you don't
have a running installation already. (I recommend Ubuntu to newbies by the way, but maybe you are using fedora because your helper knows it better.
Whatever your helper knows well, that's the distro to start with. If you have no helper ... use Ubuntu ... it's the nooby friendliest distro!!)

pcardout · 06-18-2011, 10:55 AM

Another question/guess ...

If you do have a mostly running distro, I speculate that you were trying to install Nautilus manually? Let us know if this is the case.
Maybe you did it as yourself rather than as root. This would result in a number of errors, but is easy to fix. You need to install
software (using rpm's, I assume) as root ... (Also ... why were you installing Nautilus manually ... it should already be there)

Redlar · 06-18-2011, 11:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pcardout

Greetings Redlar! Welcome to Linux. I usually recommend to newbie's that they have an experienced user sit with them at their first install.
We all love Linux, but if your install goes bad and you are brand new, it sets you up for a lot of frustration. You are missing a lot of background
information from your post that will let us help you, but I am going to take a stab at it.

I'll answer the question you asked first, but I don't have time for a full answer, and I think your problems run deeper.

Every file and directory in linux has permissions. Certain users are allowed to read/write/execute every single file and folder.
A special user (root) can do anything. Ordinary users have control over their own files/directories but not those of other
users. It makes linux very secure. The "root" user is special and used to be a system administrator. Now that people use
linux at home, they are their own admin and know the root password, but after using root to modify your system, you should
remain a less privileged user for your everyday tasks. Somehow, Nautilus does not have write permissions on a directory it needs.
You can fix that using the chmod and/or chown commands ... but a newbie should not be doing this. Read on ... I think you are
really messed up.

Please understand that my guess is you probably should start over with
your installation from scratch.

First of all home directories.

Linux was designed to be a multiuser operating system (not like Windows ... but REALLY multiuser). Each users
settings are stored in the users "home" directory. Thus if you (Redlar) and your child (redlarino) are the two users
there should exist two directories.

Code:

/home/Redlar
/home/redlarino

All your configuration files (like .Nautilus) should reside in your home directory, thus your error message should have read

The message you quote suggests, that when you were told to create a user you decided to call your user
Desktop,/home

This is a really weird name for a user, and if you really put a comma and a slash in the user name, it may have confused Linux. If this is what you did, you
were probably trying to name your computer, not your user. Also, despite what they do in the Windows and Mac world, don't go putting punctuation and spaces into
file names (at least not till your computer works right.)

Anyway, maybe Fedora does something weird. I used Red Hat back in 2002-2004, and it did not do anything so strange back then. My guess is you are set up
completely wrong and that many many things do not work. I recommend starting over. Wipe out the disk and start fresh. Make a user called redlar.
Sit with a buddy and get it running right.

If I am wrong and your system mostly works, then please tell us the following:

1) Can you get to a GUI or are you stuck at the command line?
2) From a command line, type pwd and post the result.
3) From a command line, type ls -l /home and post the result.

Get ready for a long slog ... but you'll learn a lot on the way. Don't run screaming, but I do hope you have resources to help you in person besides
just the online community. We excel at specific problems once a certain level of knowledge is reached, but again, it's tough for a newbie if you don't
have a running installation already. (I recommend Ubuntu to newbies by the way, but maybe you are using fedora because your helper knows it better.
Whatever your helper knows well, that's the distro to start with. If you have no helper ... use Ubuntu ... it's the nooby friendliest distro!!)

Thank you for help

1) Can you get to a GUI or are you stuck at the command line?

yes i can see the GUI and work with it. it is not the desktop that i use to see.

2) From a command line, type pwd and post the result.

after i type pwd in the command line i got
/etc

3) From a command line, type ls -l /home and post the result.
total 44
drwxr-xr-x. 8 root root 4096 Jun 15 16:29 .
drwxr-xr-x. 25 root root 4096 Jun 18 11:54 ..
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 Jun 15 16:31 Downloads
drwx------. 2 root root 16384 Apr 13 16:31 Lost+found
drwx------. 26 server server 4096 Jun 18 09:48 Server
drwx------. 21 userb userb 16384 Jun 5 19:53 userb
drwx------. 4 userr userr 16384 Jun 1 17:02 userr
drwx------. 21 userr userh 16384 Jun 2 17:04 userh

that's all what i got for all your questions?

i hope it can help you to help me

Thank you

yancek · 06-18-2011, 01:16 PM

What exactly are you trying to do and what did you do specifically that resulted in the error below? Trying to create a usr in the GUI, from a terminal, something else?

Quote:

Nautilus could not create the required folder:"/home/Desktop,/home/.Nautilus".

Generally, when you create a new user a /home directory is created for that user. Did you type that out yourself. I notice there is a comma after Desktop and that home is in it twice?

pcardout · 06-18-2011, 01:28 PM

OK -- Thanks for posting that. It confirms my sense that your system is funny.
Here are more questions it raised.

Quote:

1) Can you get to a GUI or are you stuck at the command line?

yes i can see the GUI and work with it. it is not the desktop that i use to see.

OK ... So you had a desktop you liked, and now it's not there. You have perhaps some different
desktop. If we assume your machine is not completely messed up (and it looks weird to me,
but maybe it is savable) then it is probably that you managed to log in as a different user.
Each user can have a completely customized desktop. When you logged in as a different user,
you got the default desktop for that user (and if the user was new, you got the default desktop in general).

I would just reboot and log in as yourself.

This raises the question ... who are you? (see your answer #3 below)

Quote:

3) From a command line, type ls -l /home and post the result.

drwxr-xr-x. 8 root root 4096 Jun 15 16:29 .
drwxr-xr-x. 25 root root 4096 Jun 18 11:54 ..
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 Jun 15 16:31 Downloads
drwx------. 2 root root 16384 Apr 13 16:31 Lost+found
drwx------. 26 server server 4096 Jun 18 09:48 Server
drwx------. 21 userb userb 16384 Jun 5 19:53 userb
drwx------. 4 userr userr 16384 Jun 1 17:02 userr
drwx------. 21 userr userh 16384 Jun 2 17:04 userh

OK ... Looking at this, your machine has four users called
"Server", "userb", "userr" and "userh". Which user are you?
If you usually log in as userr and instead you log in as userb, your
desktop might well be quite different.

And why is there a user called Server? Again, it sounds to me like you don't know the difference between
the name of the machine and the name of the user. By the way ... what IS the name of your machine?

Type uname -a and post it here.

Also you seem to have created a /home/Downloads directory as root. I guess that's OK - but it's non-standard. Linux allows you to actually be
organized. If you want to keep Downloads somewhere, keep them in the home directory of the user you were when you downloaded them.
If you need to run them as root, them put them in /root/Downloads.

The next poster asked "what are you trying to do?". A good question. Here are some more.

-- We really need to understand just how new you are to Linux.

How long have you been running it?
How many machines have you set up?
Did you set up the machine you are using now?
Are you new to fedora, but generally experienced, or are you just really new?
Have you done any reading? What?

Now to your system:

1) When was this system created?
2) Did is EVER work properly?
3) If yes to two, when did it stop working properly? What were you doing at that time?

and FINALLY (this time).

Do a cat /etc/passwd and post it here (No ... that does not reveal your passwords, but it does show what users you really
have. I wonder if userb and userb and userr still exist or if you deleted them.

I also kind of wonder why user server has a home directory called Server? You know linux is case sensitive right?

pcardout · 06-18-2011, 01:34 PM

By the way ... if you are logging on as server, and your home directory is /home/server and you decided to be cute and rename your home directory
to /home/Server then you obliterated (temporarily) all of user server's settings. Fortunately, all you need to do is rename /home/Server back to /home/server
and life will be good again.

From command line (as root).

Quote:

root@elrond:/home# mv Server server

Do you also know that in the above

root@elrond:/home# before the mv Server server is called the "prompt" and shows my user@machinename:/presentworkingdirectory
and is NOT something that you type. I wonder if you got your weird directories by typing prompts you read on the web instead of just
the commands that people were trying to show you. With noobs we don't want to be insulting, but we don't know just what it is you don't
know ... (and of course you don't either!!).

pcardout · 06-18-2011, 02:26 PM

Fedora documentation:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...1/#post4080134

Another Fedora newbie asked for documentation on Fedora and Linux.

Craigevil produced a list at the post referenced above.

I am not telling you to read all these docs to solve the exact problem you have. I am telling you to read it
to give you the background you need not to make more mistakes and to understand the help you can get
from online forums. Linux knowledge takes time to acquire but it really pays back.

I am still thinking you should just re-install with a knowledgeable friend present, but we'll keep talking and see if
we can figure out the problem you presented.