Etch, KDE. and lost password
 

Hi !

A debian etch user somebody has forgotten his password.
So, we logged as root and tried a :
passwd somebody
and he provided a new password.

No problem to log as somebody user now.
However we encounter another problem :
his KDE desktop is now almost virgin and it was quite complex and elaborated before he lost his password.
Fortunately, none of his old data seems to be lost.

Please what should we do to recover his old desktop ?
(I personally do not use KDE but fluxbox so it is difficult for me.)

Thanks for any hint.

Fabrice

That's...weird.

Just for a suggestion, check to see if he has the appropriate permissions to access the apps and such he had on his kde desktop before. Since his old data is there, and passwd shouldn't change any info about his account, this /must/ be a KDE thing. There's a file ~/.kde/Autostart/
that should have all the apps that start when he logs in. As far as themes, check wherever the themes are stored (can't remember off the top of my head) and see if there is anything there.

This is odd, though.

Thanks !

Apologize to answer only now : I waited for the KDE user to come back with his password.
I see you are right to speak about permissions : in directory
/home
we do not have access to /home/somebody ! (where "somebody" is the KDE user)
This directory is weirdly locked...
However he has access ho /home/anotheruser...
(When we ask :
who
in a konsole, we get the correct answer "somebody")
I do not understand a lot...

Sorry again to be so late.

Fabrice

Try

This will show you what permissions are set on the somebody folder.

YOu may have to add the anotheruser to the somebodys permissions. Or vice versa. YOu should be able to do that with an administrative tool in KDE. Don't rightly recall how to do it in chmod. chmod 777 something soemthing...

Thanks mase !

ls -l /home
is indeed a right way to check the permissions.


Thanks Cheftec !

I performed a
chmod 777 /home/somebody
in superuser mode.

That unlocked /home/somebody
So I can walk through "somebody" directories.

However it probably lacks another thing to get the old configuration :
in fact the "elaborated" things I spoke about where only a directory structure hierarchy (with icons) that the user had organisated for a cool access to his programs and data.
(For examples he has a provided a directory that holds short stories he wrote,
another directory holds .mp3 he converts from CD .wav. Another directory is for penguin games...)

It is maybe an "autostart" problem that would give us access to the directories that are the heads of the user organization ?

Fabrice

So the folder is owned by somebody right?
(Try chown somebody:somebody /home/somebody as root)