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I decided to move my /home directory to a separate parition. But, since I am using more than one linux distro, I want to separate the /home directories as follows:

/dev/sdax/ubuntu /dev/sdax/debian /dev/sdax/suse

After copying all the neccessary files to this folder, I changed the /etc/fstab to mount the new /home location as the default home drive

/dev/sdax /homedrive ext4 nodev,nosuid 0 2 /homedrive/debian /home bind default,bind 0 0

Now, as far as I can see while starting up debian, it is mounting the folder properly, but while I try to login it gives an error:

Could not update ICEauthority file /home/user-name/.ICEauthority

And after closing that message I get:

There is problem with the configuration server (/usr/libexec/gconf-sanity-check-2 ...

What's going wrong?

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13
  • Are the permissions of the home directory set properly? ls -l /home/user-name Commented Aug 1, 2011 at 5:53
  • Yes, I think. The permission is 644 Commented Aug 1, 2011 at 6:03
  • How about the files in the directory, specifically .ICEauthority? And is the owner/group set properly too? Commented Aug 1, 2011 at 6:14
  • I am not sure about that? How to check it and change, since I am not able to log in. Commented Aug 1, 2011 at 7:41
  • What are the permissions of the .ICEauthority file? Could you also post the output of ls -la /home/? Commented Aug 1, 2011 at 7:42

4 Answers 4

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You can login to a terminal as root (on Debian you should have set a root password when you installed) by pressing [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[F1] once your system have booted. You can then check that the permissions is correct with this commenad 

ls -ld /home/user/

and

ls -l /home/user/.ICEauthority

change ownership with

chown user: /home/user

and permissions with

chmod mode /home/user/file

Permissions on your home folder should be 755 or 750 and on the .ICEauthority file is should be 600.

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1

I followed this tutorial. Wrote the following command and it worked.

chown -R username:username /home/username chmod 644 /home/username/.dmrc chmod 644 /home/username/.ICEauthority
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1

You seem to have copied the home directories without properly preserving the ownerships of files/folders. From info cpio:

 `--no-preserve-owner' Do not change the ownership of the files; leave them owned by the user extracting them. This is the default for non-root users, so that users on System V don't inadvertantly give away files. This option can be used in copy-in mode and copy-pass mode

So you should repeat the operation as root - either the same way you did, or using the simpler cp -a command.

edit: I see you've just solved it. So it confirmed the issue was with ownerships.

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  • Should I include --no-preserve-owner in the command I wrote to copy the files? Commented Aug 2, 2011 at 8:01
  • @Starx No no no - this should NOT be used in your case. But it is the default option for non-root users - that is why I posted it here. Commented Aug 2, 2011 at 8:50
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/dev/sdax/ubuntu /dev/sdax/debian /dev/sdax/suse

I sincerely hope you're not creating data directories on the dev filesystem! 

/dev/sdax /homedrive ext4 nodev,nosuid 0 2 /homedrive/debian /home bind default,bind 0 0

OK so it looks like you're not - but its still a strange way to set up the filesystem. I assume you've got 3 different directories set up on the same filesystem...

A better way to solve this would be to use different symlinks in each distro to the location of /home

mount /dev/sdax /homedrives cp -R -p /home /homedrives/${currentdistro} rm -r -f /home ln -s /homedrives/${currentdistro} /home
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  • 2
    mount bind or sym-links accomplish exactly the same in this case.. I can't see how one should be better than the other! Commented Aug 1, 2011 at 8:00

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