I need your help. 4 years ago I burned my /home directory to a CD and then used the CD to copy my /home directory to my new release of Mandriva. The new release then told me that I didn't have the correct privileges to access the files within the old /home directory. I finally worked through the problem but I've forgotten how I done it. Now, today I need to copy the /home directory from my beloved Mandriva 2008 and use the contents within the /home directory on my new install of Slackware 13. The question is, how can I make sure I can access all my files in the /home directory when I load the old /home directory in the new install of Slackware ? Thanks in advance !

Im not sure exactly what your problem is, but if it is a permission problem, you may need to (as root) chown the contents that you copy across, to the uid/gid of the username on the new system.
As the newer system wont necessarily create the user/group names with the same numerical uid/gid

When you ls the contents from the CD, it will probably come up with a numerical uid/gid, meaning that the current system has a different uid/gid for that user name.

use

I had a similar problem with my external USB drive when I replaced Ubuntu with Slackware. The files on it showed up as being owned by user "1001" and as being read-only (probably a side-effect of the ownership issue) even though I had no user "1001" under Slackware. I concluded it was an artifact from the past.

I fixed it with chown and chmod.

The directory names and structure will be the same on my new Slackware install as they were labeled in the old /home directory. Should I use the chown and chmod commands on the old files before I burn them to CD or after I copy the files to the new install ?