The other day I decided to do a re-install on my mandrake 10.1ce box. I had /home on a separate partition and so I thought I could do a re-install and keep all my user data safe. When I re-installed, sure enough /home was there safe and sound but I could only log on a root. If I tried to log in as my normal user it came back saying that I didn't have write access to my home directory and so KDE couldn't start. I've since backed up my home directory onto a CD and then done another reinstall, this time wiping /home clean and copied everything back from the CD so I am no longer stuck but if anyone can tell me why I wouldn't have write access to my own home directory then at least I won't get stuck next time.

Cheers,

Mick.

You created new users with different ID. You can fix it in your /etc/passwd file.

Hi Emerson,
Thanks for the quick reply. I used the same username and password when I re-installed. If it was a problem in /etc/passwd how would I correct it?

Cheers,

Mick.

Every user in system has an ID, when you create a new user it has assigned uid automatically. For Debian system it starts with 1000 for first user, 1001 for next, etc. Permissions are associated with uid, not name. So may happen if you back up your home dirctory and reinstall OS and do not create users in same order as before, then uid do not match and ... you know what happens.
Assume you had user joe with uid 1002. 'adduser --uid 1002 joe' creates user with given uid for your new system. You can see uid's in /etc/passwd file.

Thanks for that Emerson, that looks pretty likely. Thanks for the help.

Mick.