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Old 02-10-2007, 07:27 AM   #1
scdemon
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Registered: Feb 2007
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Home Directory Does not exist PLEASE HELP


Just bought used laptop with Ubuntu on it.
I want to try linux so i bought it my name and password was instaled by seller and i power it up and type my user name and password and i get YOUR HOME DIRECTORY IS LISTED AS /home/myusername but it does not appear to exist. Do you want to log in with the root dir as your home dir? it is unlikely anything will work unless you use a failsafe option

yes or no both dump you back to login prompt

I know nothing abought linux but want to try it out
herd it good but getting frustrated and thinking of turfing it soon
 
Old 02-10-2007, 08:55 AM   #2
b0uncer
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Registered: Aug 2003
Distribution: CentOS, OS X
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Hmm..Ubuntu, unless configured otherwise, should have it's root account locked. Instead of having an active root account it uses sudo (which is really a sensible way) and grants the first user created during the setup full sudo permissions by default (new users created after that need to be given sudo permissions separately). Therefore if you can't log in at all with your user account you need to either use a live-cd or boot into single-user mode to fix this problem (not sure why your home directory does not exist).

To boot into a single user mode: when you boot, GRUB should launch either showing you a list of installed kernels or a message asking you to press ESC to see the meny. Press ESC if needed, then e to edit the boot lines (you should not be asked for password, or if you are, you should know that password -- bootloader password). Edit the kernel line, and at the end of the last word in the line, put one space and type single. Press ENTER and b which should now make your Ubuntu boot into a single user mode, into a maintenance runlevel, and you should be logged in as root without any passwords (this is why you should set a bootloader password, to prevent this from happening if somebody gets to your machine). Now that you're in, and know the username who's home directory is missing (let's call it username in this example), first create that missing home directory:
Code:
mkdir /home/username
then set the owner to be username (it's root by default if you create it as root user):
Code:
chown username /home/username
After this the directory /home/username should be ok (that's exactly the same directory you got warned of). Try to reboot your machine the usual way and log in as the user you did in the first place and see if that helps (if not, post a message here and describe what happened).

It could be that somebody had accidentally removed the home directory. You should still be able to log in normally, but you couldn't probably write anything anywhere since the regular user should not have permissions to write directly in root (/). That's why home directories are used; users have full permissions to their home directories, and not elsewhere; it's more secure that way. By default when a new user is created, either by using the graphical tools Ubuntu's desktop provides, or by the command useradd, a directory of the same name as the username is created under /home and set as this user's home directory, unless specified otherwise.

Hope it helps. Ubuntu is a great choice to start using Linux if you need more software to it, and have an internet connection, use apt-get or one of it's more user-friendly graphical front-ends, found in the system's application menu, Synaptic for example.
 
Old 02-10-2007, 05:32 PM   #3
scdemon
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Registered: Feb 2007
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Thanks i got in now to figure this system out thank god i have 5 computers
but all are win based 1 98se , 2 win2kpro , 3 winxp home ,4 winxp pro , 5 umbuntu
thanks for you help got to study number5 now
 
  


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