I'm using RHEL4, someday I found that my / filesystem is full, and I copy the /usr directory to another filesystem. Everything is OK, except that when I run system-config-* from a normal user, it responds with a "Permission denied" instead of asking me to type the root passwords as before. And I just simply can't reboot or shutdown my machine using a normal user account thru the Gnome main menu's Logout button.
I can't figure out how to handle this, anybody help?
Thanx!

This is interesting. So, you still have a directory named /usr ? But it is just now on a separate partition, is this correct? What does "df -h" tell you? What does your /etc/fstab file look like?

[kinzlaw@luo ~]$ df -h
Filesystem 容量 已用 可用 已用% 挂载点
/dev/hdd2 6.8G 6.0G 439M 94% /
none 506M 0 506M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda12 5.0G 3.4G 1.3G 73% /home
/dev/hda11 8.6G 6.5G 1.7G 80% /usr
/dev/hda10 1.5G 525M 971M 36% /fat
/dev/hdd3 17G 11G 6.4G 63% /vmware
/dev/hdd1 14G 13G 831M 95% /solaris
/dev/hda5 7.9G 6.9G 1022M 88% /mywinfiles
/dev/hda9 60G 56G 4.3G 93% /datastore-ntfs
/dev/hda8 20G 17G 2.8G 87% /stable-files
/dev/hda7 25G 24G 925M 97% /wingame
/dev/hda1 6.9G 6.2G 683M 91% /winsys

[kinzlaw@luo ~]$ cat /etc/fstab
# This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man fstab-sync' for details
LABEL=/1 / ext3 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
LABEL=/home /home ext2 defaults 1 2
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
LABEL=/ /usr ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda13 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hda10 /fat vfat users,exec,defaults,umask=000 0 0
/dev/hdd3 /vmware vfat users,exec,defaults,umask=000 0 0
/dev/hdd1 /solaris vfat users,exec,defaults,umask=000 0 0
/dev/hda5 /mywinfiles ntfs ro,users,exec,defaults,umask=000 0 0
/dev/hda9 /datastore-ntfs ntfs ro,users,exec,defaults,umask=000 0 0
/dev/hda8 /stable-files ntfs ro,users,exec,defaults,umask=000 0 0
/dev/hda7 /wingame ntfs ro,users,exec,defaults,umask=000 0 0
/dev/hda1 /winsys ntfs ro,users,exec,defaults,umask=000 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom auto pamconsole,fscontext=system_u: object_r:removable_t,exec,noauto,managed 0 0

I would start by looking at this line of the /etc/fstab file:

That line may be correct; I don't know. You may want to try to replace it with

and see if that does anything. Just a guess.

No, actually I had two Linux installed on this machine several months, the "Lable" is set by anaconda, the Red Hat installer. Now the other Linux has been deleted manually by me. After the "copying" I set the device to the style as you said but when I run grub-install(you know, I get two hdds and now I still have one Linux and one Windows installed, this command is sometimes useful), the identification of the filesystem became the one right now in my fstab automatically.
I guess this issue is somewhat related to the usermode package, any suggestions?

that fstab syntax looks like lvm to me. the second style mentioned above by mad scientist should be used if this is not an lvm partition.

if it is an lvm partition, then it still looks wrong. i'd guess it should be LABEL=/usr /usr ext3 defaults 1 2.



i don't know if it's related to the original question or not, but thought i'd chime in about this fstab part.



oh, i see you've posted in the time it took me to type the above. what method did you use to copy the /usr to a different filesystem? did you literally use the cp command? if so, with what tags? i wonder if the usermode executables in /usr/bin didn't lose their executable permission.

By the way, I tried to install another RHEL in VMware, initially with /usr in a seperate filesystem, and everything turns out to be OK. The fstab is

I forgot to mention that LABEL=/ is the root filesystem of the deleted "other" Linux, this seems not to be a problem because anaconda can handle it, just like the LABEL=/1 stuff(which is the root filesystem of the newly installed and still active Linux). I haven't used lvm, and I surelly know this is not a lvm partition. In my memory, since my first installation of RH9, anaconda was using this style of naming filesystem, wasn't it? Try looking into your fstab if you are using some RH or FC.

This seems impossible, before the copy I have tested thoroughly with cp, and knows what I was doing--I didn't want to put myself on such a risk that the main operating system I was using crack. And as I mentioned before,
if executable permission is missing, how can everything be OK?

There still is a fact that I have forgotten. It seems that the new Linux I'm using now is installed with only the LABEL=/1 filesystem. Then someday I "borrowed" the /home filesystem from the other Linux, this caused the "shutdown and reboot problem", and then after borrowing LABEL=/, it turned out system-config-* cannot be run...
Actually the process went like this.