Hi!

I've just done a fresh install of Vinux 4.0 which is based heavilly on Ubuntu 12.04 (my main system is Linux Mint 17 but there's a long story as to why I need to install Vinux on my laptop alongside Linux Mint). I rebooted at the end of the installation process and logged in. I was trying to figure out how to use the Users control panel applet because I wanted to change my main group to the "users" group because I have never liked the one-group-per-user way that users are set up by default on modern Ubuntu-based systems (that is actually one of the first things that I change after installing a new Linux system) and something that I pressed has messed up my user account and I can't figure out what it was because the screen reader wasn't telling me what the button label was so I decided to just press it and find out what dialog box it brought up but then the screen reader stopped talking and I assumed that the GUI had crashed so I restarted the X server from a virtual console but then I couldn't log in to the GUI under my username but only as a "Guest" user and the "Guest" user wasn't showing the top menu bar thingy in the GUI so I couldn't log out from the "Guest" user so I rebooted from a virtual console by typing "sudo reboot" (I could still log in to the virtual console under my username). Now that the system has rebooted I still cannot log in to the GUI under my username and when I open the Users control panel applet from the "Guest" user it just shows one user called "Administrator" which wasn't there previously and their password is six characters which is the same length as my password so I think that that is my user account but even after unlocking the control panel applet I cannot do anything with that user (when I try to delete it it says that the user is logged in even though they aren't). I can still log in to the virtual consoles but I cannot log in to the GUI with my username and it seems that the GUI has partially "forgotten" about my user account.

What can I do to fix this?

Thanks,

onlyonemac

I have not looked at Ubuntu for a couple of years. I would be interested to know how they work this "one group per user" system.

This sounds imposibly complex in a Unix like OS.

What is the entire output of;

On a fresh install (and with Unity, too?) -- I'd reinstall, just to save time and do it right.

The "one group per user" system is simply that when a new user is created a group with their username is also automatically created and set as their default group. I prefer to change new users to have the "users" group as their default group and delete the other group.

I was also thinking that the simplest thing might be to just reinstall, but that was a little bit time consuming because I was doing it over a network which was for some reason being rather unreliable but yeah that will probably be the simplest solution although annoying and I also don't know what I'm going to do if this happens again.

It is your box, your installs, you can do what ever you want.

If you like the idea of completely dismantling the intrinsic security of your system that is your choice.

When it breaks or is abused you get to keep the peices.

I do hope that you have studied the security system to fully understand that it is a tried and proven system for multiuser systems.

You can add your user to users group. No need to remove one user one group policy.

For login issue did you created a user while installing and also didn't you created administrator during install?

This whole one-user-per-group thing is in fact stupid because it just destroys the whole philosophy of groups in the first place. If I want my files completely private then I will deny access to group members, not put myself in a group with nobody else in it. That is why I don't use the one-user-per-group thing.

The installer did ask me to create my user account while installing, and when I rebooted at the end of the installation process my user account was fully functioning. The installer did not prompt me to create an administrator account - either the "root" user or the "Administrator" user that is currently there - but when I rebooted the "root" user was set up like it normally is on an Ubuntu system and there was no "Administrator" user. The "Administrator" user which is there currently - and which seems to have replace my normal user account from the GUI login only but neither account (mine or the "Administrator") can actually be logged into from the GUI - arrived when I clicked on an unknown button which seemed to have caused the GUI to crash and when I rebooted again I couldn't log into either account from the GUI login screen and when I logged into the GUI as "Guest" I found the "Administrator" account in the Users control panel applet where my user account used to be. I can still log into my real user account from the command line and there is no "Administrator" account anywhere. Let me know if you want a screenshot to help clarify things.

No, screenshots will not clarify anything.

The complete output of;
however will go a long ways toward clarification.

Rambling about how you will "simply deny permission to users" is pretty clearly and concisely indicates a total lack of understanding the system you are screwing up. How on earth are you going to do that while dismantling the system set up for that purpose?

The suggestion that you reinstall and try doing it correctly really is the best answer you can possibly get if you refuse to give needed information on your system.

The user root does not, in any version put out by Canonical or any respin based on Ubuntu, have a set up account by default.

There is a sudoers file that is configured to give users in the sudoers group elevated privileges that equal the privileges of the user root.

A quick look at your /etc/group contents will give just about everyone with a modicum of Linux systems a pretty good guide to your problem.

Like most problems I have on my installs this is not actually a Linux or Gnu problem at all. It is a PICNIC problem.

I like to think it is a great way to learn. You must, however, be willing to;
A>listen
B>do some sensible reading of documentation

Admittedly a lot of the documentation that actually is correctly informative is written in what is to me a foriegn language, Geek. You do have to do some translation and this takes some time.

It is much easier to find blogs to follow written by other people that also know little or no Geek but do know a lot about writting. At least 95% of those sites will get you into trouble with bad advice and, worse, bad step by step instructions.

I don't see why there is so much negativity towards me wanting to set the groups system up the traditional UNIX way and not this modern broken Ubuntu way which just makes the entire groups system redundant. Also you're correct that there is no "root" user by default - I was referring to the sudo command which I thought was actually a root user (I do normally enable the root account on my systems as well but I hadn't done that yet on this particular installation).

Anyway I re-installed it and this time I left the groups as they were because when I took another look at the Users control panel applet it turned out that there wasn't actually a button to edit the groups and it doesn't really matter anyway because I'm not needing to use this too much.

I think you will find that there is not negativity but a total lack of confidence that you know what you are doing with your editing of groups, either in Linux or Unix.

The dependence on gui applications to change user or groups does nothing to increase this confidence.

The entire Ubuntu "security model" is pretty strange so there is at least one thing we do agree on.

But that is not real importang at this point at all. I hope it works well.

Never heard of that particular respin. Had to look it up. Sounds like an interesting little distro. Some of those specialty distros are really well done. Will have to keep it in mind. Can think of people that could benefit from it.

Yes Vinux is very good as a specialist distro. Judging from my experiances with trying to use Orca under Linux Mint I was expecting Vinux to be rubbish but it's actually pretty good and even complicated interfaces such as web pages become quite a bit easier to navigate with just a little bit of practice (LinuxQuestions is actually quite difficult to use because of all of the ads).